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Miss Lucy had Friday Fluff

When a friend of my mom’s asked her about “that thing all women can do, and some men,” it turned out he meant hanging your sunglasses off the collar of your shirt. But when my husband talks about “that thing all girls know” he means hand jives (otherwise known as clapping games, hand games, handclaps, etc.). I think he was very struck by the time my friend Emily and I, two grown women in our late 20s who did not grow up together, launched into the very complicated hand motions associated with the “ooh, ah, want a piece of pie” rhyme with no prior discussion.

What’s interesting to me, though, is that all girls know hand jives but almost no two know them the same. For instance, I thought of this fluff idea because I woke up with what this website calls “uno, dos-ee-a-say” stuck in my head, only we used to do it “uno dos-ee-a-mo.” And when I went to look up the “ooh, ah, want a piece of pie” rhyme I found all sorts of funky variations. What were your rhymes? Let’s compare notes.

I am a pretty little Dutch girl, as pretty as can be
And all the boys all around the block are crazy over me
My boyfriend’s name is Fatso
He comes from Cincinetto (?)
He’s got pickles on his toes and a cherry on his nose
That’s the way my story goes
My mother told me
If I was good-ie
Then she would get me
A rubber dolly
But someone told her
I kissed a soldier
So I won’t get my
Rubber dolly
Go to the river, jump in
Sink to the bottom, the end

Say say my playmate
Come out and play with me
And bring your dollies three
Climb up my apple tree
Slide down my rainbow
Into my cellar door
And we’ll be jolly friends forevermore, more, shut the door

Miss Lucy had a steamboat
The steamboat had a bell
Miss Lucy went to heaven
The steamboat went to…
Hello Operator
Please give me Number Nine
And if you disconnect me
I will kick you from…
Behind the ‘frigerator
There was a piece of glass
Miss Lucy sat upon it
And broke her big fat…
Ask me no more questions
I’ll tell you no more lies
The boys are in the bathroom
Zipping up their…
Flies are in the meadow
The bees are in the park
Miss Lucy and her boyfriend
Are kissing in the D-A-R-K D-A-R-K dark dark
Dark is like a movie
A movie’s like a show
A show is like a TV show and that is all I know
I know my mother
I know I know my pa
I know I know my sister with the 40-acre bra [incidentally, almost sure this is a corruption of something like “48-D bra”]

oh, and does anyone remember a really complicated one that involved lots of girls in a circle? the rhyme was a story about a swamp or a bog or something and you slapped hands around the circle until someone got slapped out at the end. you did this over and over until there were only 2 girls left and you had a sort of hand/arm tug of war going as fast as you could through the rhyme to be the one who won?

I can’t believe I’ve known you half my life and we haven’t discussed this before.

We must have! It’s impossible that we didn’t. We went to summer camp together. (Also it sounds kind of familiar.)

Oh, and I definitely did “Down By the Banks of the Hanky Panky” (with essentially no variations from SM’s!) and we had a similar circle setup for “Fuzzy Wuzzy Was a Bear.” But I only knew “Cinderella Dressed in Yella” as a jump rope rhyme.

eeny meeny sicilini*
ooh ah amelini
otchy kotchy Liberace
I love you
take a peach, take a plum, take a piece of bubble gum
no peach, no plum, just a stick of bubble gum
saw you with your boyfriend
how did you know?
looked through the keyhole (nosy)
didn’t do the dishes (lazy)
didn’t flush the toilet (nasty)
jumped out the window
now I know you’re really crazy!
eeny meeny sicilini, etc.

*or “gypsellini”

and

I don’t wanna go to Mexico no more, more, more
There’s a big fat policeman at the door, door, door
If you open the door
He will pee on the floor
I don’t wanna go to Mexico no more, more, more

There’s also a long one that I don’t remember, but the end of it was

3,6, 9
Your momma ain’t fine
She looks like a monkey on a telephone line

I recognize the “1, 2, 3, 4, 5″ one above as the ending of the rhyme that starts “uno-dos-i-esa” (or “a-mo”) that FJ talked about:

I met my boyfriend at the candy store
He bought me ice cream, he bought me cake
He took me home with a bellyache
Mama, mama, I feel sick
Call the doctor, quick quick quick
Doctor doctor, will I die
Count to five and you’ll be alive

I did a couple of these when I was a kid, but most of the ones I know are from working at a before-school program for young kids a few years ago.

Ask your mother for fifty cents
To see the big giraffe
With spots on his hind legs and spots on his…
Aunty Mary had a canary, also had a duck,
She took it round the kitchen and taught it how to…
Fried eggs for breakfast, fried eggs for tea,
The more you eat the more you want to grow up to be
A fisherman, down on the wharf,
Along came a shark and bit off his…
Cocktails, ginger ale, forty cents a glass,
If you don’t like it, shove it up your…
Ask no questions, tell no lies,
I saw a policeman doing up his…
Flies are dirty, mosquitos are worse,
This is the end of a very rude verse!

Miss Lucy had a baby
She named him Tiny Tim
She put him in the bathtub
To see if he could swim
He drank up all the water
He ate up all the soap
He tried to eat the bathtub but it wouldn’t go down his throat

Miss Lucy called the doctor
Miss Lucy called the nurse
Miss Lucy called the lady with the alligator purse

… and then they all come in and diagnose him, but I can’t exactly remember (and should be working).

Miss Lucy (or Suzy) had a baby
His name was Tiny Tim
She put him in the bathtub
To see if he could swim
He drank up all the water
He ate up all the soap
He tried to eat the bathtub
But it wouldn’t go down his throat
Miss Lucy called the doctor
Miss Lucy called the nurse
Miss Lucy called the lady with the alligator purse
Measles said the doctor
Chicken pox said the nurse
Nothing said the lady with the alligator purse
Miss Lucy kicked the doctor
Miss Lucy punched the nurse
Miss Lucy gave a dollar to the ladywiththealligator purse purse purse

See see my playmate!
I cannot play with you
my sister’s got the flu
the mumps and measels too
slide down my rainbow
into my pot of gold
and we’ll be jolly friends
forever more, more, shove you out the door!

and:

Down on the shores of the hanky panky
where the bullfrogs jump from bank to banky
with an A -E -I -O -U – slapadoodle – and – Y!

and:

Miss Suzy had a stinkbug
The stinkbug had a bell – ding ding! (and here you would do a dinging hand motion to the side)
Miss Suzy went to heaven
The stinkbug went to…
Hello Operator
Give me number 9
And if you can’t connect me
I’ll chop off your…
Behind the ‘fridgerator
is a piece of glass
miss Suzy sat upon it
And broke her little…
Ask me no more questions
Tell me no more lies
The boys are in the bathroom
Zipping up their…
Flies are in the meadow
Cows are in the park
Miss Suzy and her boyfriend
Are kissing in the D-A-R-K-D-A-R-K dark dark dark!
The dark is like the movies
The movie’s like a show
A show is like a TV show and that is all I know
I know you know my ma
I know you know my pa
I know you know my sister with the 40-acre bra

We had Miss Mary, not Miss Lucy. And we stopped at the dark.
Now I feel kind of deprived.

When I was in college, I found out that “Say-say oh playmate” was pretty much the lyrics of “Playmates,” a hit for Kay Kyser in 1940. Sadly, the Kay Kyser lyrics have overwritten my childhood version in my head.

@rachael: i wonder if your stinkbug variation isn’t also a corruption of the original steamboat, since it makes much more sense for a steamboat to have a bell, than for a stinkbug. it’s like an international game of telephone!

The saints* go:
eenie meenie popsakini
ooh aah oobelini
otchie kothchie liberace
say the magic words:
a peach, a plum, a half a stick of chewing gum
and if you want the other half, this is what you say
amen, amen, amendiego sandiego
hocus pocus dominocus
sis sis, sis boom bah
rivers, rivers, rah rah rah
boo boo boo
criss cross, applesauce
do me a favor and get lost
while you’re at it drop dead
either that or lose your head.
sitting on a trash can
I can, you can, nobody else can
sitting around, nothing to do
along comes grandma**, cootchie coochie coo!***

Oh I love this! I’m in my 20s now and I still have the overwhelming urge to turn to the person next to me and start playing a clapping game whenever I’m standing in a line. Fortunately I trained my younger brother to play with me many years ago so I still have someone I can do this with. It gave my father fits. Mwahahaha!

Here’s one I picked up when I lived in Alabama:

My momma, your momma
Live across the street
18, 19 Alligator Street
Every night they have a fight
And this is what they say
(clap clap clap)
Boys are rotten
Made out of cotton
Girls are sexy
Made out of Pepsi
Babies are ticklish
Made out of licorice
Soda pop
Mama pop
I love you!

Oooh I bet stinkbug IS a corruption of steamboat! That makes sense. But when I was little I used to imagine a tiny stinkbug ringing a bell like jiminy cricket or something. (I grew up in the US and Australia but most of these games I remember are from the years in Australia).

Miss Suzy had a baby
His name was tiny tim
she put him in the bathtub
to see if he could swim
he drank up all the water
he ate up all the soap
he tried to eat the bathtub
but it wouldn’t go down his throat

Boys go to Jupiter to get more stupider
Girls go to Mars to be superstars

We didn’t use that intro though.

I know the racist one that people have mentioned: it starts “I went to the Chinese restaurant to buy a loaf of bread / He put it in a paper bag and this is what he said,” and you can probably imagine the ching-chong jokes from there.

I don’t wanna go to Mexico no more more more,
there’s a big fat policeman at the door door door.
He’ll grab me by the collar,
make me pay a dollar,
I don’t want to go to Mexico no more more more.

My music history class in college (and a fellow student thereof) inspired me to write a parody:

I don’t wanna go to History no more more more,
my teacher makes me melt into the floor floor floor,
but the hottie in the back
makes me wanna come on back,
so I’m gonna go to History some more more more!

Down by the banks of the Hanky Panky
Where the bullfrogs jump from bank to banky
With an eep, ipe (?), ope, op
Hop off the lilypad and… kerplop
1 2 3 4 5

Ours was way shorter.

Down by the river with the hanky panky
Where the bullfrogs jump from bank to banky
With an E, I, O, U, bam, boom.

We did ABC, 123, too, but it’s completely different than Fillyjonk’s.

ABC, easy as 123, my daddy drank Cocafee(don’t ask what that is) right off of my feet.
That’s how nasty people can be.
Judge, judge, call the judge!
Mama’s gonna have a baby, a sweet little choc-o-late baby!
If it’s a boy, I’ll give it a toy.
If it’s a girl, I’ll give it a curl.
If it’s a twin, I’ll give them a spin.
Wrap it up in toilet paper,
Send it down the elevator.
First floor, STOP.
Second floor, STOP.
And then it would just go on until someone screwed it up….usually me.

And our “uno-dos-ee-a-say” sounded more like “uno-dos-siesta”, which makes total sense when you’re 8.

Miss Lucy had a steamboat
The steamboat had a bell
Miss Lucy went to heaven
The steamboat went to…
Hello Operator
Please give me Number Nine
And if you disconnect me
I will kick you from…
Behind the ‘frigerator
There was a piece of glass
Miss Lucy sat upon it
And broke her big fat…
Ask me no more questions
I’ll tell you no more liesMiss Suzie told me all of this
The day before she…
Dyed her hair in purple
She dyed her hair in pink
She dyed her hair in polka dots
And washed it down the sink, I think.

There’s a great book called _The Games Black Girls Play_ by Kyra Gaunt that looks at black girls’ jump rope and hand clapping games (including some of those mentioned above) as the foundation of African American musical styles and a tool for enculturating/socializing girls’ bodies. Highly recommended.

Miss Lucy, the racist one, and “Girls go to Mars” etc. are all from mid-’80s CT for me — out in the boonies. “I don’t wanna go to Mexico”, “Uno-dos-i-esa” and my version of “eeny meeny” are all urban RI in 2004 or thereabouts.

Mary had a little lamb, she thought it rather silly
She threw it up into the air and caught it by its
Willy was a bulldog, sitting in the grass
Along came a bumblebee and stung him up the
Ask no questions, tell no lies
I saw a p’liceman doing up his
Flies are a nuisance, gnats are worse,
That is the end of my dirty little verse.

There was also an song:
When Suzie was a baby, a baby Suzie was,
She went waah, waah, waah-waah-waah
When Suzie was a schoolgirl, a schoolgirl Suzie was
She went Miss, Miss, I can’t do this
When Suzie was a teenager, a teenager Suzie was,
She went ooh, aah, I lost my bra,
I left my knickers in my boyfriend’s car
When Suzie was a mother, a mother Suzie was
She went shush, shush, the baby’s sick
When Suzie was a granny, a granny Suzie was
She went knit, knit, knit knit knit
When Suzie was a skeleton, a skeleton Suzie was,
She went rattle, rattle, rattle-rattle-rattle
When Suzie was a ghost, a ghost Suzie was
She went wooo, wooo, woo-woo-woo
When Suzie was an angel, an angel Suzie was
She went flap, flap, flap-flap-flap

There were appropriate actions to go with most of those. I’ve heard a few variants. I think Suie may also have done something as a toddler, but I forget what it was in our version.

infamousqbert, our version went ‘Jingle bells, Batman smells, Robin flew away, Kojak lost his lollipop on the M-1 motorway…’ We had altered versions of most of the Christmas carols. Shepherds washing their socks by night was the very least of it.

Down down baby
Down by the rollercoaster
Sweet sweet baby
I’ll never let you go
Jimmy jimmy cocoa pop
Jimmy jimmy pow
Jimmy jimmy cocoa pop
Jimmy jimmy pow
Grandma grandma sick in bed
Called the doctor and the doctor said
“Let’s get the rhythm of the hands” *clap clap* (2x)
“Let’s get the rhythm of the feet” *stomp stomp* (2x)
“Let’s get the rhythm of the head, ding dong” (shake head) (2x)
“Let’s get the rhythm of the hooooot dog” (swivel hips) (2x)

… and I’ve totally blanked on the rest! It might just go back to “down down baby.”

I remember this one (from growing up in the UK!). It makes absolutely no sense at all, now I come to write it down!

I went to a Chinese restaurant
To buy a loaf of bread-bread-bread
She wrapped it up in a five-pound note
And this is what she said-said-said:
My name is Elvis Presley
Girls are sexy
Sitting on the back porch
Drinking Pepsi
Cuddling and kissing
Wow-ee!

I only recognize “Say, say, oh playmate” and “Miss Lucy” (although we sang that one Miss Suzy and didn’t have the bit at the end after “dark”). All I remember about Miss Mary Mack is the first two lines: “Miss Mary Mack, Mack, Mack/All dressed in black, black, black…” Anyone else remember the rest?

Also, funny story – a month or so ago, a friend gave my daughter a music box at her baptism party that plays the tune from “Say, say, oh playmate.” When I wound it up, all of the women and the trans man who were there sang the entire thing, some of us complete with hand claps! The men who were there all looked at on in confusion.

Down by the park you say hanky panky
say ooh la ooh la hanky panky
say fe fi fo fum
pass it to the sound of the
a e i o u bulldog
Mickey Mouse built a house
Donald Duck messed it up
Who will pay the consequences Y-O-U

And whoever got hit on the last “U” was out. It got violent!

Additionally, my hometown’s variation on Miss Suzy was:

Ask me no more questions
And tell me no more lies
The moral of the story
Is Suzy really dies

We had another Miss Suzy one with her at various stages at life. All I remember is that the phrase for teenager was “Oh no I lost my bra, in my boyfriend’s car,” though. Anybody else familiar with it?

I went to a Chinese resturant
To buy a loaf of bread-bread-bread.
They wrapped it up in tin-foil
And this is what they said-said-said.
Myyyy naaaame issss
Kay-eye pickolotta
Pickolotta kay-eye
Come back Sally
Wally-wally Whiskey
Chinese Chopsticks
CHOP!

And on Chop you were supposed to try and ‘chop’ the other person’s wrist with your hand. So, yeah, now I see why I had a vague feeling that it was racist.

Oh I remember these! I knew the Miss Suzy/Lucy ones, Miss Mary Mack, and one that went with the doublemint gum jingle, which, if I remember the motions right, sounds like they are the same as this: … it’s very complicated, with a hand swing, slaps up, slaps down, a sort of hand-grabbing-swinging-thing, butt slaps, snaps…
I have no idea why we were doing that to the doublemint gum jingle.

We also did the one with standing in a circle and slapping people out, but it went to a nonsense rhyme:

E, I’m glad somebody besides me knows the “rainbarrel” version with the second verse about being sick at home!

We had Miss Suzy too, not Miss Lucy, and oh, we had one I don’t think I saw above!

A jump-rope rhyme:
Cinderella
Dressed in yella
Went upstairs to kiss a fella
Made a mistake and kissed a snake
How many doctors did it take?
(start counting and keep going until the person in the rope misses a jump)

Miss Mary Mack, Mack, Mack
All dressed in black, black, black
With silver buttons, buttons, buttons
All down her back, back, back,
She asked her mother, mother, mother
For fifty cents, cents, cents
To see the elephants, elephants, elephants
Climb up a fence, fence, fence

Okay, that’s all I remember — and I confess those last two lines seem pretty wonky to me. (Maybe my sister’s and my variation when we couldn’t remember the real words?) But maybe I’ve jogged someone else’s memory!

I went to a Chinese restauraunt
To buy a loaf of bread, bread, bread.
They asked me what my name was,
And this is what I said, said, said:
My name is E.I., E.I. Nickanye, Nickanye
Pom pom poodle, willy wally whiskers.
My name is
CHEESE!

This is making me really sad! Most of my primary school days were spent at a school with a grand total of three girls in the class, so I never got to learn the secret girl-language of hand jives and rhymes. I did, however, grow up with a very sound working knowledge of cricket, football (AFL here, I’m another Aussie) and Transformers.

The flies are in the meadow
The bees are in their hive
And forty girls and boys
Are kissing in the D-A-R-K D-A-R-K D-A-R-K dark dark

My best friend can never wrap her head around “how weird” is the version I know.

I also used to know a plethora of “Cinderalla dressed in [color]” rhymes. I think I made some up myself, but then I had a book of jumprope rhymes so it’s possible I got them from there, but I only remember the first half of the one involving blue and tying shoes. :(

See, see, my playmate
Come out and play with me
And bring your dollies three
Climb up my apple tree
Slide down my rain BARREL
Into my cellar door
And we’ll be jolly friends
For ever more (and various more, shut the door, channel 4 variations)

Everyone around me did rainbow, but my mother had told me it was supposed to be rain barrel so I was all condescending to other people who had never heard of rain barrels. I actually think my mom may have been right in the original since nothing else in the rhyme is impossible.

No one seems to have mentioned this one (much is phonetic, no idea how it should be spelt):

Miss Lucy sat upon it
And broke her big fat…
Ask me no more questions
I’ll tell you no more lies

Her “ask” was little, not big and fat. Interesting! We also ended with “Dark.”

The “jolly friend” slid down your “rain barrel”, which must be a combination of your “slide down my rain barrel” and another poster’s “shout down my rain barrel”.

Cindarella was a jump-rope rhyme, and you kept jumping after “How many doctors did it take?” until you messed up to determine the astronomical count of doctors. If you sucked at jumping, it only took a few to save her.

With an eep, ipe (?), ope, op
Hop off the lilypad and… kerplop

The second line was nonsense syllables until the word “flop”.

I’ve never heard most of the others. I do remember a complicated circle handclap involving “Rockin’ Robin”.

@Lisbeth Feldspar – Thank you! Those are the words I remember (now that you’ve jogged my memory, at least!). Seems like there was a bit at the end about jumping so high they won’t be down til next July…but I might be mixing it up with a folk song I know. And I think you’re remembering the last 2 lines right, because that’s the version we sang too.

delurking to note that I remember Miss Suzy from second grade up, and Down By The Banks of the Hanky Panky from Jr. High. We also had the following:

Down down baby
Down by the roller coaster
Sweet sweet baby
Never gonna let you go
Shimmy shimmy cocoa pops
Shimmy shimmy POW POW
Shimmy shimmy cocoa pops
Shimmy shimmy POW POW
Mama mama sick in bed
Called the doctor and the doctor said
Let’s get the rhythem in the head
Ding dong (head side to side with ding and dong)
Let’s get the rhythem in the head
Ding Dong
Lets get the rythem in the hands
(clap clap)
Let’s get the rhythem in the hands
(clap clap)
Let’s get the rhythem in the feet
(stamp stamp) (stomp feet)
Let’s get the rhythem in the feet
(stamp stamp)
Lets get the rhythem in the…
HOT DOG (hands on hips making circle with hips!)
Let’s get the rhythem in the…
HOT DOG
Put them all together and what do you get?
Ding dong
(clap clap)
(stamp stamp)
HOT DOG
Put them backwards and what do you get?
HOT DOG
(Stamp stamp)
(clap clap)
Ding Dong!

As it so happens, I was at a camp retreat two weeks ago, and the subject of hand clap games came up. Two blinks, and we had a circle going, made up of women ages 18 to 29 – and two guys who had never done this in their lives, but were vastly amused to be learning. It honestly was one of the highlights of the weekend – none of the planned and organized team building activities had NEARLY the same impact that doing Miss Suzy and her steamboat did!

oh! I knew Fillyjonk’s version of “down down baby, down by by the rollercoaster” too (with shimmy). But I don’t think it was as popular as the others I mentioned. And I can’t really remember if I did clapping things to it or not.

I learned the ones about Miss Suzy and Miss Mary Mack when I lived in northern Indiana, and then I moved to western PA and I think people there knew them with minor variations. Western PA is definitely where I learned Stella Ella Ola, and I’m fuzzy on the rest. I also went to a summer camp for Indiana University alumni and their families, and may have learned some there.

We sung a distorted version of that “Say say my playmate”! This was Edinburgh, early 80s. It went something like:

See see oh play me, come out and play with me
And bring your dolly too
My dolly’s got the flu
Climb down your drainpipe
And up my apple tree
See see oh play me, come out and play with me

The associated hand movements went: clap own hands, clap right hand with playmate’s right, clap own hands, clap left hand with playmate’s left, clap own hands twice, clap back of both hands to back of playmate’s, clap palm of both hands to palm of playmate’s. (Muscle memory is weird.)

There was also a long one about the life and times of “Jenny” who was a baby (who went waah waah), then a child (can’t remember), then a teenager (who went Ooh Ah I Lost My Bra), and then a Mum (nag nag), a Granny (knit knit), a Ghost (whooo!) and then a Nothing which is where the rhyme stopped.

Fascinating to see how it varies across the world – what a splendid Friday Fluff!

Oh, I remember the “down down baby” one! Also the Miss Suzy ones. And Miss Mary Mack. (PG County Maryland, elementary school 1988-1996 since I just had the one school that didn’t differentiate elementary to middle.)

We had another one. It was a circle game with one person in the middle with her eyes covered, who would dance at the beginning and spin round at the end to point to the next person in the middle:

One day when I was walking
Walking to the fair
I met a senorita with a flower in her hair
Oh shake it senorita
Shake it all you can
Shake it like a milkshake
And do the best you can
Oh she wobbled to the bottom
She wobbled to the top
She turned around and turned around
Until she made an S-T-O-P STOP!

….Amusingly, the first few times I did this? I completely misunderstood what the song was about. Being as I had a waist-length mass of hair, I was shaking THAT. Got me plenty of mockery, I can tell you, until someone “kindly” pulled me aside to “explain” what I was doing wrong.

I don’t think she always needed medical assistance, but I honestly can’t remember. I’m pretty sure my friends didn’t like the other Cinderella rhymes very much so I didn’t usually have a chance to repeat them.

At our school in California, girls went to Mars to get more candy bars.

We had Miss Lucy, and “kick your big fat ask me no more questions,” I think. But in our version it was a 16-hour bra (actually, after “and that is all I know-know-know I know my mother…). I have heard versions that then go into like 4 more verses after the bra line, which I always find shocking.

I always wanted to know the alligator purse one! I never learned it and was always jealous of the girls who knew it. And I never had Miss Mary Mack down really well. But I remember like 3 different songs we would use for the complicated one that impresses husbands, including the Oreo cookie ad song.

It doesn’t transcribe, but we spent a LOT of time doing Slide. There was also a really short one that also involved counting, and I’m trying to remember it. It involved a man drinking turpentine, and to survive you had to count to ten with your eyes closed?

Oh down by the banks! That was the camp game we always played when we had to wait for something, like for lunch to be ready. That and other camp songs will be stuck in my brain for the rest of my life, taking up space. It makes me a hit with kids, though.

We had Miss Suzie too! We also had the bullfrog one, but had a slightly different ending:

Down by the banks of the hanky panky
Where the bullfrog jumps from bank to banky
Where the eep, opp, oo-sock-a-dilly and a ker-plop!
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10!

Then on ten, if the slapper hit the slappee’s hand, then the slappee was out. If the slapper missed, then he or she was out.

I was a camp counselor a few years ago, and they had added to it! After counting they had a verse:

Mickey Mouse had a house
Donald Duck messed it up
Who should pay the consequences mouse or duck?

Then the person who got slapped on duck had to pick. Then they spelled out either M-O-U-S-E or D-U-C-K and did the competitive slapping thing.

We also had Miss Mary Mac when I was little:

Miss Mary Mac Mac Mac
All Dressed in black black black
With silver buttons buttons buttons
all down her back back back
She asked her mother mother mother
For 50 cents cents cents
To see the elephants elephants elephants
Jump over the fence fence fence
They jumped so high high high
They touched the sky sky sky
And they didn’t come back back back
Till the Fourth of July ly ly

We also had a game called Slide which didn’t have any words, except at the beginning you said “Slide, slide, slipperly slide” and sometimes people would count, but not always. Then you clapped once, clapped right hands once, clapped, then clapped left hands once, clapped, and clapped both hands back and front once. Then did all of it twice. Then three times, until someone messed up.

We also had this more complicated clapping game that started “Avocado is the name of the game if you mess up you must have a word to say.” This phrase got repeated over and over with the clapping until someone messed up. Then you had to think of a good word. Then you were out and that word became the name of the game for the next round.

Oh man, these were also awesome. There were more, but I’m not remembering them.

I never knew the Mexico song! I have wished for years i could remember the original song we did sing with those hand movements (before the Oreo cookie song), but I think it was mostly nonsense syllables and I also think it’s gone from my brain.

Meaghan, we grew up really near each other! (Though at slightly different times.) So it’s no surprise if you know the same “down down baby” as me, and I also remember the senorita song, although I always thought (incorrectly and sort of ridiculosly) that she “waddled” to the bottom.

Shoshie, it sounds like we had similar games. There was a good year or two in school when I played Slide over and over again both in the morning before school started and during recess. I wish I could remember the highest number I got to!

We played a game called Concentration where everyone stood in a circle and then there was a rhyme that went:
Concentration do-de-wop
Pick it up
Naaaame ooooof *some noun like colors or shapes or states, anything*
Then, each person had to name a color or shape or whatever while keeping the rhythm of the game and if they missed their beat they were out.
The circle kept getting smaller and smaller
and when it was only two people
we held hands and swung our arms back and forth to Down by the River
if it ended when your elbow was back you lost and the other person was the winner.

Concentrate
Concentrate
People are dying, children are crying
Concentrate
Concentrate

Stab a KNIFE in your back and let the blood run down, let the blood run down, let the blood run down (2x) (at this point you thump them on the back, then run your fingers down)
Squeeze an ORANGE on your shoulders let the juice run down, etc.
Crack an EGG on your head and let the yolk run down, etc.

There were two possible endings to this, both of which went “you’re at the top of the Empire State Building, suddenly your best friend PUSHES you off” (and you push them in the back). One required your victim to pick a color beforehand, and you would say “did you see your color?” That one never worked. The other went “a cool breeze” (blow on neck) “a tight squeeze” (squeeze shoulders) “and now you’ve got the chills.” That one worked.

I also had more on the end of Miss Lucy Had a Steamboat, though the rest is identical to FJ’s main post (I was also in the DC area, so perhaps that’s why).

I know my mother
I know I know my pa
I know I know my sister with the 40-acre bra
My mother is Godzilla
My father is King-Kong
My sister is the stupid one,
who made up this dumb song.
My mother gave me a nickle,
My father gave me a dime.
My sister gave me a boyfriend,
His name is Frankenstein.
He made me do the dishes,
He made me wash the floor,
He made me wash his underwear,
So I kicked him out the door.
I kicked him over London,
I kicked him over France.
I kicked him to Hawaii,(here there were two options)Where he lost his underpants.
OrWhere he did a hula dance! Hula hula!

Concentration! That’s the one that I was trying to remember. Except we said:
Connncentration
Concentration is the game
keep the rythym
keep the rythym and the beat (sometimes name)
and then we’d pick a category, or “Starting with [letter]” and then the game progressed as bellacoker described.

We played a very similar version of Concentrate, but it always involved the pushing but neither of the other parts of the ending and I’m not sure if we did the whole rhyme. I think we just repeated the “people are dying” rhyme over and over. As well, we always tried to come up with a setting besides the Empire State building. Everyone was always trying to one up each other with a more creative story.

Cute Bruiser, yes I remember Wadeliachee! Did you grow up in the Midwest by chance, maybe around central Iowa? You seem to have all the ones I remember.

Coooome ooooon and
Wadeliachee wadeliachee
Wadelly-oo wadelly-oo
Wadeliachee wadeliachee
Wadelly-oo wadelly-oo
Simplest thing, there isn’t much to it
All you gotta do is doodle-ee-do it
I love it so, wherever I go I
Doodle-ee-doodle-ee-do
(Repeat, getting faster each time; last time the last line is
“Doodle-ee-doodle-ee-Doodle-ee-doodle-ee-Doodle-ee-doodle-ee-do.”)

Also, when we played Concentration, it involved three people. One person to tell the story and push, one person to be pushed and a third person who held the falling person’s hands and slowly lowered them onto their stomach to create a sensation of falling.

Wow! All of these are jogging some very old memories. I grew up in L.A. in the ’70’s and I definitely did Mary Mack, Miss Lucy, “Say, Say oh play mate (with the good/evil sides) and Down by the banks of the Hanky Panky.

My sister who has a memory like a steel trap would remember every word to every one of these but they are, for me, pretty vague, but a fun reminder!

@millefolia: Nope! I grew up in California, but I spent a lot of time at summer camp with kids from all over the country (and some from out of country) so maybe that’s where I got some of them, because my friend who also grew up in California thinks Waddaliacha is WEIRD.

Oh this is so fun! In elementary school in LA we used to do a huge group one where you’d take turns jumping into the middle of the circle and making up a move that everyone else would then add on to the rest of the ‘dance’. There was a repeating rhyme involved, but all I remember was that it ended with ‘my name is so and so, and this is the way I jigalo!’ LOL Does anyone know the rhyme that goes with that? I wish I could remember it.

@Cute Bruiser: Yes! Those are the exact words we used for “Mary Mack,” thank you! (Wonder if it was fifteen cents or fifty — inflation?)

@fillyjonk: I haven’t thought about “Concentrate” in years! We often used to do it at the same time as the “Trance” thing where you try to get the girl in the middle to levitate (yeah, THAT often worked), so I may have mixed up their aims, but I thought “Concentrate” was also supposed to have some sort of paranormal payoff…. Anyone remember?

Wadaliacha, wadaliacha
Doodly-doo doodly-doo
Wadaliacha, wadaliacha
Doodly-doo doodly-doo
It’s the simplest thing
There’s nothing much to it
All you gotta do is doodly-doo it
I like the rest
But the part I like best
It goes doodly-doodly-doo, woo!

@Lisbeth Feldspar: Inflation would make sense (cents? Haha). Then again, my friends were famous for mishearing EVERYTHING. The line about “dollies three”? They were convinced it was “jolly free” no matter how many times I asked what the heck that meant!

Speaking of paranormal payoff, this is slightly different, but did anyone else do the whole Bloody Mary thing in the mirror? I always refused to participate, but apparently you turned off the lights, said Bloody Mary three times while facing the mirror, and she was supposed to appear.

farfalla, depending on where and when you went to school, one of us might even have learned it from the other one. :) (Though from the fact that you have that many Miss Lucy additions, I’m guessing you’re younger than I am.)

Hunh. I learned a version of “eeny meeny gypsallini” from one of my sisters (possibly from her friends who corrupted other words), but I never heard any of the others. I guess nice middle class girls from the suburbs in upstate NY in the early 80s did do this much? Or I had a deprived childhood.

Ama lama ku ma lama
ku ma lama yees-tay
Ama lama ku ma lama
ku ma lama yees-tay
Oh de oh de yo yo yees-tay
eeny meeny gypsallini
ooh ah ah amelini
otchi katchi kumalachi
I mean you!
Czechoslovakia – boom city boom
Yugoslavia – boom city boom
Let’s get the rhythm of the hands (clapping)
We got the rhythm of the hands (more clapping)
Let’s get the rhythm of the opposite numbers
two and four and six and eight
I want it, I want it, I want it so bad
And when I don’t get, it makes me mad
And when I get mad, I get frisky
Get your mind out of the gutter
I’m talking about whiskey!

Simplest thing, there isn’t much to it,
All you gotta do is doodle-ee-doo it
I like the rest, but the part I like best
Is the doodle-ee-doodle-ee-doo.

And then you sang it faster and faster until you couldn’t keep up. The hand motions were pat legs twice, clap hands twice, shake fists one over the other twice, touch ear, nose, other ear, and nose with one hand, then raise open hand and close it in a fist (right hand first, then left hand), and repeat. That doesn’t make much sense written down, but maybe it’ll sound familiar…

@killedbyllamas – I refused to do Bloody Mary too! Except the version I heard was that you went into the bathroom, turned off the lights, and spun around three times, saying “Bloody Mary” three times. Then she would come out of the mirror with an axe and chop off your head! You can see why I refused to do it.

Miss Rachel and I have a similar version of the Miss Lucy. (I’m from St Louis Mo, hi five for the midwest yo) Here is my version:

Miss Lucy had a steamboat
Her steamboat had a bell
Miss Lucy went to heaven
Her steamboat went to
Hello operator
please give me number nine
and if you disconnect me
I’ll kick your fat
Behind the frigerator
there was a piece of glass
Miss Lucy sat upon it
And broke her little
Ask me no more questions
And tell me no more lies
Miss Lucy’s in the bathub
with 40 Naked guys.
And 50 lemon pies.

And then there are a couple more versus I don’t remember….. But it ends with

Boys and girls are kissing in the
D a r k
D a r k
D a r k
Dark dark dark.

@Nina: Ours was something like that. Pat legs twice, clap hands twice, but we had flat hands and not fists but otherwise the same motion, after that it gets blurry for me. I remember touching your nose and ear on each side, but I’m almost certain we didn’t do the last fist part.

@ Cute Bruiser – where in California did you grow up? I’ve never met anyone else who knew Guadaliacha except people who went to the same camp – maybe it’s a NorCal thing? But that doesn’t explain Millefolia’s version…

Add me to the “too scared to do Bloody Mary”. But I was scared of dark bathrooms anyway. I don’t know where that fear came from but I could not go into a room that had a mirror in the dark so I had to reach my hand in to flip on the switch before I could go all the way in. Bloody Mary was definitely out of the equation.

@ Nina: At the time I learned Wadaliacha I would have been living in the Sierra Nevadas. I can’t be sure if I learned it at Girl Scout camp, which I only attended once, or the church camp I went to every summer after that. Both of those were in California, though. My friend who thinks it’s weird grew up in the Bay Area.

Dallas area, early 90s.
We had “eeps ipes opes ops, jumped off the lilypad and went kerplop.”
And miss Suzy with a little ask me no more questions.

I definitely remember the “ooh, ah I lost my bra,” but maybe as part of a different rhyme.
I also remember something about a valley girl, but I’m not sure if it was a clapping game or a song with pantomiming.
And speaking of songs with pantomime,

You must pay the rent! (napkin pinched in the middle, at mustache height)
I can’t pay the rent! (napkin on the head like a bow)
You must pay the rent! (mustache)
I can’t pay the rent! (bow)
I’ll pay the rent! (napkin on the neck, like a tie)
My Hero! (bow)

Cute Bruiser, I forgot about that one! We used “the men don’t care cause they’re in their underwear” line as well.

Nina, I’m not sure whether she was actually supposed to do something when she appeared in our version or not. I refused to do it because I was fairly sure it wasn’t real, but was scared enough that it was that I preferred to not poke a potentially hostile paranormal thing with a stick.

Then there was “Rockin’ Robin”, which started off the same as the actual song, but then it wanders off around the second verse.

Rockin’ in the treetops
all day long
huffin’ and a puffin’
just singing that song.
All the little girls on Jaybird street
love to hear the robin going
tweet tweet tweet.
Rockin’ Robin
tweet tweedle leet
Rockin’ Robin
tweet tweedle leet

Wow! This is a great thread! In the late 70s in Sparks, NV we did Mary Mack, Miss Suzy, See See Oh Playmate, Down Down Baby, and Cinderella. That’s all I can remember. We did versions of these in double dutch, as well as hand claps. I’m going to have to relearn all of these so I can teach my daughter (and my son too, if he’s interested)!

Are Cassi and I the only ones who didn’t grow up with *any* of this? I seriously don’t remember a single one of these, I don’t remember other girls doing them, they’re all a complete mystery to me. It’s sad! I wish I’d done all this stuff, but no.

Why do I have no earthly idea what this is all about? I’m 34, and grew up in a suburb north of New York City. I have NEVER heard of this rhyme or hand jive or any version of it…or others. When I first started reading I thought you were going to talk about the hand jive from Grease. I’m sad, this sounds like it was fun!

@Cute Bruiser – huh, that’s weird. The camp my mom learned it at was near Yosemite, but it was associated with Berkeley, so it had a Bay Area connection. No accounting for how some songs travel, I guess!

@Puffalo – We did the “you must pay the rent” pantomime at Girl Scout camp in New Mexico. I’d totally forgotten about it!

Growing up in the Chicago ‘burbs in the ’70s, most of my friends were guys, so I only played the hand clapping with my sister and a few girl friends in school. We only knew Miss Mary Mack to go along with the clapping.

I feel like this is right up there with the string game around your hands, when it comes to weird stuff everyone does as a kid.

Cat’s Cradle!! This was more popular in school–we’d play this all the time (the teachers didn’t complain as much since it was quiet compared to hand claps). That and what are now known as “cootie catchers,” but we never had a name for them other than “those paper finger-clicking things.”

Ack, posted too soon. I meant to add that all these rhymes and games sound awesome, and it makes me sad that they apparently weren’t part of my environment when I was growing up (70s, Northern Nevada).

That and what are now known as “cootie catchers,” but we never had a name for them other than “those paper finger-clicking things.”

SM and I were just talking about those! She sent me one recently in a letter that I had made in 2002, and I was really horrified that I had made it in 2002. It was a particularly good cootie catcher, though.

@killedbyllamas – yeah, I knew rationally that it couldn’t be real, but still… Of course, I also knew people who swore up and down that they had done it and barely escaped with their lives, so yeah, why poke a hostile paranormal with a stick? (love that phrase, by the way!)

Hm, we had the Place in France, and it included the Place on Mars, but I only remember the first two lines of each. The Mars bit was like, the women smoke cigars and the men wear bikinis and the children drink martinis. Then something about a snake with something in it’s eyes?

And, has someone already mentioned this one, there was a circle-clap game where one girl would stand in the middle and ‘shake it like a milkshake’ and at the end was turn around and turn around and S-T-O-P STOP!? I can’t remember any more of that one, because I was always too shy to play any of the circle games.

I also recall a hand-game that was more about the clapping than a chant. It was like a challenge to see how far you could go. I don’t remember if you increased the speed each time you did it, or if you added a new step to the end, or both, but I don’t remember any words to it beyond counting each “level”. Does this sound familiar to anyone else?

@Bunnymcfoo – that’s the exact same Down Down Baby we used to do. I grew up in central NC.

We also had:

Miss Suzy had a steamboat
The steamboat had a bell
Miss Suzy went to heaven
The steamboat went to
Hello operator
Give me number nine
And if you disconnect me
I’ll kick you from
Behind the fridgerator
There was a piece of glass
Miss Suzy sat upon it
And cut her big fat
Ask me no more questions
I’ll tell you no more lies
That’s what Miss Suzy told me
Just before she died!

I faintly remember her dying her hair in a sink, but I don’t think we used it consistently.

There was also:

A sailor went to sea sea sea
To see what he could see see see
But all that he could see see see
Was the bottom of the deep blue sea sea sea
Repeat verses 3 more times swapping out see/sea for chop, knee, and ankle.
Repeat verse one last time using sea-chop-knee-ankle.

For sea/see, you put your hand on your forehead, for chop, you hand chop your elbow/upper arm, for knee and ankle just pat that area. Then you have to do all four hand motions for the last verse.

My absolute favorite is one I haven’t seen here yet – the Mcdonalds hand game. For that one, we’d sit in a circle and one girl would clap the hand of the next girl to start off. The clap would travel and whoever’s hand was clapped last was out. It went: Big Mac, Filet of Fish, Quarter Pounder, French Fries, Icy Coke, Thick Shakes, Sundaes and Apple Pies!

Oooh – just remembered this one:

Early one morning, late one night
two dead boys got into a fight
Back to back, they faced each other
Pulled a knife and shot each other
A deaf policeman heard the noise
And ran to save the two dead boys
If you don’t believe it’s true
Ask that dead man who saw it too!

Under the bambushes, down by the sea (bum bum bum), Johnny broke a bottle and put the blame on me (bum bum bum), I told my momma, she told my papa,l and Johnny got a whacking on the B-U-M [try to hit other child’s butt].

A sailor went to sea sea sea to see what he could see see see but all that he could see see see was the bottom of the deep blue sea sea sea. There were other verses.

I went into a grocery store to buy a loaf of bread, they wrapped it up in a five-pound-note and this is what they said: My name is Hanky-Panky sugar-and-candy, roly poly tipsie toesie, sitting on the backseat drinking all the Pepsi.

There was one about Suzy who had a baby which grew up, finally being a teenager who left her knickers in her boyfriend’s car (though no-one I knew knew a teenager whose boyfriend had a car, at that stage – it was definitely based on American television).

Rachael, in New Zealand the Suzy rhyme was the same with the exception of stinkbug being doggy (poor dog going to hell, we always thought), and I’ve never heard the rhyme continue after the ‘dark’ bit.

And the baby rhyme had the unfortunate ending of “and he died last night with a bubble in his throat.”

I always thought that Bobo was a name of a person (maybe a baby, though at one point I imagined a baby bear) and that the “wottnin, tottnin” was a corruption of walking and talking. Bobo was a baby who is walking and talking, and maybe falling down) an itty bitty baby walking and talking, who toddles up and scares you (Boo!).

And for our “Say say oh playmate” we also said “SLIDE down our rain barrel INTO our cellar door” which was delightfully nonsensical to me at the time.

I refused to do Bloody Mary too! Except we were older, like fifteen I think, and it wasn’t Bloody Mary, but a man from some horror movie. I seem to remember that he got somehow killed by bees in the movie, and came back to haunt everyone or something (I refused to watch the movie as well). I want to say Sandman, but I’m pretty sure it’s not right. I’m sure it was a somethingman …maybe?

Miss MARY had the steamboat, damnit! Otherwise my version was pretty much the same, only a 40-metre bra (metric system represent! haha). We also had a version of “down down baby” which was similar to the one Emma B posted but unfortunately I can’t remember it.

See, see my bonny
I cannot play with you
My sisters got the flu
Chicken pox and measles too
Slide down the vortex
Into the swimming pool
And we’ll be best of friends
For ever more, more, shut that door at number sixty four four

Oh hey, question for you guys about Ten In A Bed. I’m going to go ahead and assume most Americans, at least, know that one. But did anyone do the Extended Remix Version, which went like this?

There were ten in a bed and the little one said “roll over, roll over”
So they all rolled over and one fell out
And he gave a little scream and he gave a little shout
Please remember to tie a knot in your pajamas [this line is to the tune of “Hail, Brittania”]
Single beds are only made for 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8
Nine in a bed and the little one said…

So many memories! I grew up on the Canadian prairies, and am very familiar with Miss Suzy and her ilk. Incidentally, the fact that my family lived in the UK meant I was exposed to multiple versions through visits to my girl cousins!

Anyone remember this one?

One bright day in the middle of the night,
Two dead boys got up to fight.
Back to back they faced each other,
drew their swords and shot each other.
A deaf policeman heard the noise
and ran to save the two dead boys.
And if you don’t believe it’s true,
go ask the blind man, he saw it too.

Ohh, we had so many of these;
In my neck o’ the woods, the “Seniorita” one went:
We’re going to Kentucky
We’re going to the fair
To see the Seniorita
With flowers in her hair.
Shake it, Seniorita
Shake it if you dare.
Shake it like a milkshake, and
do the best you can.

We also had one that I haven’t seen here yet:
Have you
ever ever ever
In your long-legged life
Seen a long-legged sailor
with a long-legged wife?
No, I’ve
never never never
In my long-legged life
Seen a long-legged sailor
with a long-legged wife.
Have you
ever ever ever
In your short-legged life
Seen a short-legged sailor
with a short-legged wife?
No, I’ve
never never never
In my short-legged life
Seen a short-legged sailor
with a short-legged wife.
Have you
ever ever ever
In your bow-legged life
Seen a bow-legged sailor
with a bow-legged wife?
No, I’ve
never never never
In my bow-legged life
Seen a bow-legged sailor
with a bow-legged wife.
Have you
ever ever ever
In your long-legged life
Seen a short-legged sailor
with a bow-legged wife?
No, I’ve
never never never
In my long-legged life
Seen a short-legged sailor
with a bow-legged wife.

The jive was the same each verse, but there were different hand motions for “long” “short” and “bow”. You got faster each verse, and tried not to get it wrong on the last one, which went really really fast.

Nobody has mentioned my favorite one, which had a more complicated clapping pattern than most of the rest:

The spades go:
Two lips together, tie them forever
Bring back my love to me
What is the me-ee-eaning
Of all these flo-ow-owers
They tell the sto-o-ory
The story of love
From me to you

My [someone] bought a new car
He painted it red with a star
He crashed it into a rock
And now he’s dead, oh yes sirree

(and lots of other verses I don’t remember)

And here’s a partial variation of one that someone else mentioned:
My name is L-I, L-I, piccali piccali
Pom pom beauty, wah wah whiskey
Chinese, Japanese, American Indian chief. [what is the obsession with Chinese?]
(at which point you had to cross your arms over your chest and sit motionless until whatever happened)

I *loved* Concentrate. And while it’s not a handclap, there was always “Princess Pat”

The Princess Pat
lived in a tree
she sailed across
the seven sees
she sailed across
the channel two
she took with her
a rigabamboo
a rigabamboo
now what is that?
It’s something made
for the Princess Pat

… I’m sure there’s more, but I can’t remember it. I learned them both in (otherwise-detested) YMCA day camp in Delaware in the late 80s-early 90s.

I can honestly say I do not know a single one of these, or any hand jive anything. Seriously. Not one rhyming hand clapping game. I don’t even know patty cake. I think this might be the reason I’m not girly. I could never understand it until now.

All I know is that I’m going to have “the lady with the alligator purse purse purse” going through my head all day. I haven’t thought about this stuff in years and sadly remember so little of it, though I know my friends and I certainly did it (elementary school from late 70s to 1984-85ish in the northwest suburbs of Chicago). This is great.

@Emerald – Thank you! That would have bugged me all day. In our version toddler, Suzy wanted a lollipop.

I probably should have mentioned I learned these in Chicago south suburbs in the mid 90s, but it’s awesome to see all the regional variations.

Also, ‘slide,’ with no words, was really popular. Once, on a long train ride, my friend and I discovered we went to the same junior high a few years apart and instantly started it up, much to her husband’s confusion and horror. :)

The end of Princess Pat:
It’s red and gold (it’s red and gold)
And purple too (and purple too)
That’s why it’s called (that’s why it’s called)
A rigabamboo (a rigabamboo)
Now Captain Jack (now Captain Jack)
Had a might fine crew (had a might fine crew)
They sailed across (they sailed across)
The channel too, (the channel too)
His ship did sink (his ship did sink)
And yours will too (and yours will too)
If you don’t take (if you don’t take)
A rigabamboo, a rigabamboo, a rigabamBOO!

interfacings-thank you! I was sitting here wracking my brain to think of stella ella ola-we used to do that at recess all the time!

The other one I thought of may have only been a thing in Canada, where Smarties (chocolate, like plain M&Ms) are available. It was a wierd hand clapping pattern to the old jingle:

“When you eat your smarties do you eat the red ones last?
Do you suck them very slowly, or crunch them very fast?
This candy coated chocolate, now tell me when I ask,
When you eat your smarties do you eat the red ones last?”

We used to try to go as fast as we possibly could without screwing up the words or the motions. Thanks for the fond memories :)

Thanks fj, that was it! It still scares me a bit, especially now that I remember how the girls used to say “Caaaandymaaan…” slowly in this lowered tone. I’m all shivery now, all alone at the office, and it’s dark outside. Silly, I know…

Apples on a stick make me sick, make my tummy go 246,
Not because I’m dirty, not because I’m clean,
Not because I Kissed a boy behind a magazine.
Uh – oh here comes Neenee with her pants on tight!
She can wiggle, She can wobble, she can do the splitz,
But I betcha bottom dollar that she can’t do this!
1-2-3-4 Betcha bottom dollar she’ll hit the floor!

In the South of France
Where the naked ladies dance
And the men play drums
On the naked ladies’ bums…

There was also one a girl came back from some holidays taught us all which involved standing in a big circle and it became a massive craze at my school (boys and girls). I have a feeling there was some competitive bit at the end to so with being fast but not sure… It sounds like it might be related to a senorita song someone mentioned up thread, but got misheard and retold as (phonetics):

We also had Miss Mary Mack (I seem to remember a verse where she went upstairs, stairs stairs…?) and our version of ‘I went to a Chinese Restaurant was like this:

I went to a Chinese restaurant,
To buy a loaf of bread-bread-bread
He wrapped it up in a five pound note
And this is what he said-said-said

Bow to the King
Curtsy to the Queen
Show your knickers to the football team! (this verse accompanied by actions including flicking skirt up, but most of us just pretended.

There was another verse, or maybe a whole version where ‘He said-said-said’ (racist actions included):
Bend down and touch your knees
Eyes like a japanese
Hair like a billy goat
Boys do the can-can
Girls do splits
I don’t care if I show my knicks (more skirt flipping)

And Susie…

When Susie was a baby,
A baby Susie was
And she went wah-wah
I want my ma!

When Susie was a toddler
A toddler Susie was
She went “WHYYY? WHYYY?
WHYYY? WHYYY?”

When Susie was a schoolgirl,
A schoolgirl Susie was,
She went Miss! Miss! I can’t do this!
Got my knickers in a right old twist!

When Susie was a teenager,
A teenager Susie was,
She went ooh-ahh, I lost my bra,
I lost it sitting in my boyfriend’s car!

When Susie was a mother
A mother Susie was,
She went shit! shit!
The baby’s sick!

When Susie was a Grand-ma
A Grand-ma Susie was
She went knit-knit
I dropped a stitch!

When Susie was dying
Dying Susie was
She went urrghh-arrghh
Urrgh-argghh!!

When Susie was a ghost
A ghost Susie was
She went wooo-wooo
I’m haunting yoooou!

Ooh I just remembered a song (with actions but not a clapping game!) Mum used to teach it at playgroup and added some of her own verses so I don’t know which were originals, and I can’t remember all of it …

Mr Wiggle Worm
He lives under a stone
Doesn’t have a television
Doesn’t have a phone

Doesn’t have a table and
He doesn’t have a chair
Doesn’t have a bed but
He doesn’t really care

Mum made up loads of extra bits and made up actions and little picture cards with the words on that she held up — the kids used to love it! :-)

I am truly horrified to have just remembered a version of the “say say, my playmate” that we used to do. The first verse was the same as upthread, and the second began thusly:

Say say my playmate,
I cannot play today.
Because of yesterday,
He took me to his house,
He threw me on the couch,
He said it wouldn’t hurt,
He stuck it up my skirt,
Boy did my belly rise,
And was my mom surprised!
My daddy jumped for joy,
It was a baby boy!

We did “Cinderella dressed in yella” for jumping rope and we also had this one:
Strawberry shortcake cream on top
What’s the name of your sweetheart?
Is it A, B, C. . .

The letter where you stopped/stumbled was the initial of the boy you had a crush on.

We also had a handclapping/rope jumping rhyme of which I can only remember a couple of lines:
Mama Mama I’m so sick/Call the doctor quick quick quick/ Doctor, Doctor, will I die/ Close your eyes and count to five/ One-two-three-four–five/ I’m alive!

Then this gem:
Firecracker, Firecracker boom boom boom/Firecracker, Firecracker boom boom boom/ The boys got the muscles/ The teachers got the brains/ The girls got the sexy legs/ And we won the game!

Ours was Miss Suzy also. In addition to the “steamboat” one, we had one that involved various hand gestures, but wasn’t a clapping game. It would go something like:
Miss Suzy was a baby, a baby, a baby
Miss Suzy was a baby
And this is what she said
“Waah Waah” [accompanied by rubbing eyes to mime crying]
There was a whole series of them, and after every new verse, you would go back and say all the other ones as well, in reverse order.
The one that got the most giggles on the playground was:
Miss Suzy was a teenager, a teenager
A teenager
Miss Suzy was a teenager
And this is what she said
“Ooh aah forgot my bra!” [while slapping hands crosswise on chest]

@Kate S: I remember a version of your first one, it was like a call-and-response:
Saw your boyfriend last night.
How’d you know?
Peepin’ through the window
Nosy!
Stole a piece of candy
Greedy!
Jumped out the window
You gotta be crazy!
[Then said together]
Eenie meenie attcha keenie
Ooh ahh alloweenie
Otcha cotcha liverotcha
Which
means
I
hate [or love]
you
so
ppbblllt [blowing a raspberry; possibly it was blowing a kiss if saying “love?”]

Also, anyone remember doing something where you sat behind a person, knocked on hir head, and said, “Crack an egg on your head, let the yolk run down, let the yolk run down” (while running your fingers down hir back) and then poked hir in the back and said, “Stab a knife in your back, let the blood run down, let the blood run down” (repeating the fingers-on-back). I am not sure what the point of it was, I think something spooky, along the lines of Bloody Mary?

I didn’t play them much, Renatus, but I heard them so much that I can recognize them, even if I can’t remember them fully.

The valley girl one I was thinking of earlier started with “Like totally, for sure,” may have talked about not wearing underwear, and also had the line, “I think I popped my wonderbra!” in there, if I remember correctly, though it may have been “I think I lost my underwear”.

Does anyone remember one that ends “that’s why campbells soup is mmm mmm good!” ??? I remember the words were about something gross and you slurp right before the campbell’s soup line but I can’t remember the whole thing.

We did “Concentrate” almost exactly as Fillyjonk described it, except the ending was “Tie a rope round your neck and pull… pull… pull….” – the person being “pulled” was supposed to fall backwards at that point. Sometimes worked. I think there was a vague feeling that it was somehow supposed to make something supernatural happen, but nobody was very clear what it was. Wow, I haven’t thought about that in years.

We also did a version of “Say say my playmate” which went:

See see my pretty
Won’t you come play with me?
My sister’s had the flu
Since 1972
Slide down the drainpipe
Slide down the banister
And we’ll be best of friends
Forever more
One-two-three-four
And slam the DOOR!

fillyjonk, I might have been combining the memory of that one about cheerleaders (but with “the sun, I swear, i s bleaching out my gorgeous hair!”) with some other, lewder rhyme. Or maybe we had a second verse.

Now my brain is rather confusedly trying to sing Miss Mary Mack to the tune of the littlest worm song. “She asked her mom (she asked her mom) for fifty cents (for fifty cents) to see the elephant (to see the elephant) jump over the fence (jump over the fence…”

Well, I too was one of those girls that never played clapping games (to be fair, this is because I was a: antisocial and b: horrible to almost everyone – I’m not proud of it) but I grew up in London in the ’90s, and I definitely remember hearing “down down baby” done as a clapping game. Strange to think how long these rhymes have been around, and how far they travelled.

Apropos of the mention of elephants in Miss Mary Mack’s rhyme: does anybody else know the Tree Song? It was my absolute favorite song from camp, and I still sing it sometimes today. It has hand movements, but not jivey ones, instead they illustrate what’s going on in the song:

There was a tree (arms go up to represent tree) (everyone else repeats)
The prettiest little tree (arms represent tree) (everyone else repeats)
That you ever did see! (hands flail about with excitement at how pretty the tree was) (everyone does this line together)
And the tree was in the hole (arms make a hole) and the hole was in the ground (patting motion for ground) and the green grass grew all around all around and the green grass grew all around. (more patting motions for grass) (everyone did this line together too)

I’m having hand-clapping-game flashbacks from this whole thread! (Grew up in Tucson, Arizona, learned them in elementary school in the 1970s.) Though, @alibelle, I don’t think there’s a causal relationship to being ‘girly,’ since, for what it’s worth, I never was and still am not.

For those who aren’t familiar with them, there seem to be a number of videos on YouTube searchable by “hand clapping games”; here are two showing a couple of the basic clap-patterns I remember using most often:

I don’t remember all of it but I don’t think it’s been mentioned yet. It was a jump rope game that started “down in the valley where the green grass grows” and something, something a boy kissed her or something.

I just realized that there’s a lot of these rhyming games about being kissed by boys.

OMG this is so fun! I was in elementary school in the mid-90’s in Phoenix, and Miss Suzy was definitely still around, having babies, sitting on glass, etc. lol.

Here’s one no one has mentioned:

Candy Apple, on a stick
Makes my tummy go two-forty-six
Not because I’m dirty,
Not because I’m clean–
Just because I kissed a boy behind a magazine! Woo!
(kissy face noises)

We also did an alternate ending to “Down by the rollercoaster”…as I recall, after the “shimmy shimmy” verse, we did:

I had a boyfriend (a Triscuit!)
He said a Triscuit (a biscuit!)
Cherry ice cream, soda pop, vanilla on the top!
Ooh Chileeta [sp?]
Walking down the street
Ten times a week
I said it, I meant it
I stole my mama’s credit
I’m cool, I’m hot
Sock me in the stomach,
Three more times, UGH! [with punching motions]

We definitely did the two versions of Miss Suzy (had a steamboat the steamboat had a bell, and when she was a baby/teen/mother). I also remember doing Miss Mary Mack, but in our version it was an elephant that jumped the fence.

We also did “Down By the Banks” which is similar to what others have done:
Down by the banks of the Hanky Panky
Where the bullfrogs jumped from bank to bank
Saying eeps, ipes, opes, ums
Chili Willy ding-dong
I pledge allegience to the flag
Michael Jackson makes me gag
Pepsi-Cola’s got caffeine
Now we’re talking Billie Jean
Billie Jean went out of style
Now we’re back to
Down by the banks of the Hanky Panky
Where the bullfrogs jump from bank to bank
Saying eeps, ipes, opes, ums
Chili Willy ding-DONG!

I also went to Girl Scout camp where we sang one song about the Titanic (the only line I remember is, “uncles lost their aunts/little children lost their pants/it was sad when the great ship went down”), and Tom the Toad, which was a favorite:
Oh Tom the Toad
Oh Tom the Toad
Why did you jump into the road (x2)
You were so big and green and fat
And now you’re small and red and flat
Oh Tom the Toad
Oh Tom the Toad
Why did you jump into the road

Also, we did “I won’t go to Mexico,” but for us it was “I won’t go to Macy’s.” Everything else is the same.

My favorite was always Keeping Rhythm, where you clap out a basic rhythm (usually at a table during a meal). Everyone is given a number, starting with 0. There’s a song that you sing at the beginning of the game that goes:
Keeping rhythm
Jolly jolly rhythm
Ready go?
Let’s go.
Starting with
Zero.

Then the girl who was 0 would say her number twice, and call another number. If someone messed up (either called a number that wasn’t in the game, or got off the rhythm), she was out. Once there were two people left, they were named two similar words (soup/soap, bubble/bauble, etc.)

I grew up in the 90’s, and went to Girl Scout camp around ’95. I also went to a Jewish sleepover camp starting in 2001. Eventually, my friends and I stopped doing hand games and would sing Spice Girls/BSB/Nsync songs instead. :)

We sang the Princess Pat at Girl Scout camp (the whole version, including the lines Kelly listed)! As well as a variation on the worm song…now that I think about it, we sang a lot of songs to that tune: one about a bear, and “the cutest boy,” as well as the Princess Pat and the worm.

I also vaguely remember the cheerleader chant, although I never would have without reading the words through a few times. In response to the people who didn’t know these because they were antisocial, I remember a lot of words and tunes, but none of the hand motions. This is because I was too shy to actually play any of the games! I just watched other people play from a distance and avoided participating myself.

@millefolia – I know a version of the tree song, but it isn’t a call and response song and doesn’t have hand motions. It goes:

Once there was a tree
’twas the prettiest little tree, did you ever see a tree,
and the tree in the ground,
And the green grass growing all around, all around,
the green grass growing all around.

And on that tree there was a limb,
prettiest little limb, did you ever see a limb,
limb on the tree and the tree in the ground
and the green grass growing all around, all around
the green grass growing all around.

You keep adding verses – branch, bough, twig, leaf, nest, bird, etc. I learned it from Sam Hinton’s album “Whoever Shall Have Some Good Peanuts.”

Another song I learned from my mom (who learned it at family camp in CA) was this one:

Did you ever see a fishie on a bright summer day?
Did you ever see a fishi go swimmin’ down the bay?
With his hands in his pockets and his pockets in his pants,
Did you ever see a fishie do the hootchy-kootchy dance?
You never did!
You never will!

I also went to Girl Scout camp where we sang one song about the Titanic (the only line I remember is, “uncles lost their aunts/little children lost their pants/it was sad when the great ship went down”)

Oh they built the ship Titanic to sail the ocean blue
And they thought they had a ship that the water wouldn’t get through
But something something something the ship would never land
It was sad when the great ship went down

It was sad, it was sad
It was sad when the great ship went down (to the bottom)
All the husbands’ and wives’ little children lost their lives
It was sad when the great ship went down

Oh they were not far from England
They were not far from shore
When the rich refused to associate with the poor
So they put them down below
Where they’d be the first to go
It was sad when the great ship went down

It was sad, it was sad
It was sad when the great ship went down (to the bottom)
All the uncles’ and aunts’ little children lost their pants
It was sad when the great ship went down

re: 40-acre bra – I knew the exact same rhyme but I always ended it with “18-hour bra.” which I then got older and assumed must have been 18-dollar bra… but apparently 18-hour bras are real! BLEW MY MIND.

i also did Miss Mary Mack (the elephants/fourth of july), and here’s my own version of eeny meeny:

eeny meeny sesalini
oo-wop bop a leeni
otchy kotchy liberace
i hate boys
a peach, a plum, a stick of bubble gum
not a peach, not a plum, just a stick of bubble gum
last night, saw you with your boyfriend
how’d i know? peeped through the peephope
nosy, ate a box of cookies
greedy, jumped out the window
crazy, that’s when i heard her calling, and this is what she said
(repeat beginning)

i also knew some girls who knew a complicated set of hand-gestures to take me out to the ball game but i never learned them :(

krismcn: if you’re still reading this thread, email me at phledge at cox dot net. Sparks is small enough that I might know you personally.

So many of these I remember vaguely! We ended some differently; for example

There’s a place in France
where the naked ladies dance
there’s a hole in the wall
where the men can see it all
but the men don’t care
’cause they poo their underwear
and the underwear they poo
costs a dollar-ninety-two PLUS! TAX!

And Cinderella was ended with a count of how many doctors it took = how many plain rope jumps you could do.

oh some people have posted a song here that’s I’m sure to teh same melody as this one…like snake charmer music?

In the land of Oz all the ladies smoke cigars
every puff they take is enough to still a snake
with the snake is dead they put roses on his head
when roses die they put diamonds in his eyes
when they diamonds break is it 1988 ????? (wierd we kept singing that after 1988, when I was 8 years old by the way)

the one song I knew the guys got involved with is the come be my playmate song. Because we all learned the nice verse in music class. ANd then after class they boys would sing the verse “slide down my razorblade into my cellar door and we’ll be enemies for ever more” or something mean like that.

I vaguely remember many of these from my school-age years in Nebraska and South Dakota in the late 70s/early 80s, especially “Say Say Oh Playmate/Enemy” and “Miss Suzy.”

Not sure anyone has posted this version of “Eeny Meeny” yet. I actually learned it as a cheer for the local high school football team, complete with extensive gestures:

Eeny meeny pepsadini
Oo bob a boobalini
Hotche kotche liberace
I pick you up
Have a peach, have a plum
Have a stick of chewing gum
If you want another one,
This is what you say:
A man, a man, a man diego, san diego
Hocus pocus domino
I pick you up
Sis, sis, sis boom bah
[Team name], [Team name] rah rah rah!

Sarah C., I also knew “Firecracker, Firecracker, boom boom boom” — also as a cheer done from the stands at high school football games.

@lastersloth …. yes I rememebr the gigalo and the tune it went to. It was like hey laser…yeah…are you ready….yeah …you sure you’re ready?…yeah…to gigalo…
and then while you dance you go “I got my hands up high and my feet down low and that’s the way we gigalo”

DRST –“I guess nice middle class girls from the suburbs in upstate NY in the early 80s did do this much? Or I had a deprived childhood.”

I don’t know DRST, maybe I wasn’t a “nice” middle class girl from the suburbs of upstate NY in the ’80s because I know most of these and even the rape version of the playmate one (which I was trying to think of all the way through these comments-Thanks Kirsche).

We called them hand-games and we had the slap ones and the back tickling ones too. Did anybody else make rose-gardens on other girls arms. I can’t remember the exact sequence but you basically pretended to rake (scratch), ho, plant (pinch), etc. the other girls arm until the skin turned bright red and you had a “Rose Garden.”

Somebody asked about Three Chartreuse Buzzards which wasn’t a hand jive but had big gestures and we did it as a call and response. It went:
Three (hold up three fingers) chartreuse (hold arms down to sides with hands clawed) Buzzards (flap arms like wings)
Sitting in an old tree (we got very creative with our old tree shapes)
One flew aaaa-way. (arm swung away)
What aaaa shame! (hand to forehead in gesture of woe-is-me)

Two chartreuse buzzards (etc.) until you got to No chartreuse buzzards and said: “One has reeee-turned, let us reeee-joice!” (arm swings back and shake hands in a hallelujah gesture) and counted back up to three.

Interestingly, none of my hand games had any reference to being fat that I can remember. (e.g. Miss Suzy broke her LITTLE ask me no more questions). I somehow grew up without much internalized fat hatred and never remember anyone making fun of me or my family for being fat so perhaps the culture of the kids around me hadn’t picked up on it. Once I hit high-school I started to pick up on the larger pop-culture feel of it but until then I was blissfully ignorant that lots of folks hated fat people.

There’s a place on Mars
Where the women smoke cigars
Every puff they take
Is enough to kill a snake
When the snake is dead
They put diamonds in its head
When the diamonds crack
They put mustard on its back
When the mustard dries
They count 1-2-3-4-5!

The last line is yelled out very quickly.

Also a big favorite among the 2nd grade crowd in those days was:

This land is my land
It isn’t your land
I’ve got a shotgun
And you ain’t got one
I’ll blow your head off
If you don’t get off
This land belongs to only me

Guaranteed to piss off parents, which made it obligatory for all carpooling.

I know I did some clapping games back in the day, too, but the only rhymes I remember are the jumprope ones.

It’s funny that the Lucy/Suzy baby one was taught in a different version as a preschool song:

I had a little turtle.
His name was Tiny Tim.
I put him in the bathtub
To see if he could swim.
He drank up all the water.
He ate up all the soap.
And now he’s home sick in bed
With bubbles in his throat.
Blub! Blub! Blub!

I learned most of these in some version, though I was never good at the actual clapping. Extreme childhood klutz here.

One that I haven’t seen yet:

Three Irishmen, three Irishmen,
digging in a ditch.
One called the other one a dirty son of a
Pitched me out the window,
landed on a rock.
‘Long came a bumblebee and stun me on my
Cock-tails, Cock-tails,
five cents a glass.
If you don’t like it, shove it up your
Ask me no questions, I’ll tell you no lies.
If you ever get hit with a bucket of pitch,
Be sure to close your eyes.

OMG, I did not read through all of these because I must run, but what an awesome trip down memory lane! I remember the shimmy-shimmy coccoa puff one, the Miss Suzy (ours was a weeee bitty bit different) and the lily pad one, and Miss Mary Mack. I grew up in the eastern suburbs of Pittsburgh, and graduated high school in 96, if that helps :)

Does anyone remember Sarah Sponda? It was more like a game, and I remember it from Girl Scouts. You sit in a circle and you pass something, like a stone or something, from your right to your left hand then to the person next to you, while singing:

I could never get the hand-claps right, but I loved the rhymes. I’d sing along when girls did these, but mostly I played with the boys – it was easier.

Suburban MA, early 90s.

I don’t think this one has been mentioned yet:
A peach, a plum
A half a stick of chewing gum
And if you want the other half, here is what you say:
Amen, A man
A man Diego, San Diego
Hocus-pocus almagocus (?), sis-boom-bah
Rah rah rah, boo boo boo*
Criss-cross, applesauce
Do me a favor and get lost
While you’re at it, drop dead
If you don’t you’ll lose your head
Dun da-da dun dun, dun dun (to the tune of “shave and a haircut”)

*Here one could insert the name of your summer camp and the name of a rival summer camp, such as:
Meadowbroook, Meadowbrook, rah rah rah
Grossman, Grossman, boo boo boo

Not sure if there was clapping for this (it was a boy song, which did not generally involve clapping):
Jingle bells, Batman smells, Robin laid an egg
Batmobile lost a wheel and Joker does ballet – hey!

@vegkitty We did Keeping Rhythm too! Betcha we have some Jewish geography in common.

@fillyjonk re: cheerleaders. We had the following:
Oh, my god!
I just got a manicure!
The sun, I swear
Is bleaching out my gorgeous hair!
36, 24
I don’t even know the score!
Go, go, fight, fight
Gee, I hope I look all right.

And the boys forgot their underwear while watching the naked ladies dance. In France.

Oh gosh yes — “Bringing Home a Baby Bumblebee.” (“Won’t my mommy be so proud of me…”) But that’s one that, like Mary Mack and a couple others, I would suspect doesn’t have a ton of regional variation. I think the peach, plum, half a stick of chewing gum is so far the champ as far as number of mutations available, though Miss Lucy’s steamboat/stinkbug is up there.

I’m bringing home a baby bumblebee,
Won’t my mommy be so proud of me,
I’m bringing home a baby bumblebee,
OUCH! It stung me!

Then you squish up the baby bumblebee, only to find you have baby bumblebee all over you, then you either lick it off and then throw it up then mop it up (if it’s after Taps and you’re an older Girl Scout!) or just skip straight to wiping off the dead baby bumblebee on your neighbors.

Oh my god, I think I need a manicure
The sun, I swear, is bleaching out my hair
57, 54, was I supposed to know the score?
Ra ra, fight fight,
Gee I hope I look alright
Go Team!

In the interest of full disclosure, I was a cheerleader from 5th through 12th grade (I know, I know :P) and for that entire time we occasionally did that as an actual cheer just to be funny, as we were a particularly non-stereotypical squad.

My mom taught me the Titanic one. We used to sing it in the car. I always thought she made up the Uncles and Aunts line so it was weird to see it here.

Oh they built the ship Titanic, to sail the ocean blue.
and they thought they had a ship that the water would never go through.
She was on her maiden trip when an iceburg hit the ship
It was sad when the great ship went down.

It was sad, (so sad)
It was sad, (too bad)
It was sad when the great ship went down.
(Husbands and wives, little children lost their lives or Uncles and Aunts, little children lost their pants)
It was sad when the great ship went down.

The were near to Englands shore, about a hundred miles or more.
When the rich refused to associate with the poor.
So they put them down below where they’d be the first to go.
It was sad when the great ship went down.

(As a child I thought they had put the rich down below for their bad behavior. I was really shocked when I found out it was the other way around.)

I taught music at a girl-scout summer day-camp in upstate NY throughout my high-school years so I got to teach a lot of my childhood songs to bunches of little girls. It was great fun.

And I think there was more. But I was crap at any jump-rope beyond basic enter & exit (and I considered THAT a huge accomplishment) and couldn’t handle the turning and ground-touching, so I never played it myself.

I took a sip
And he went down
Right through my pipes
He must have drowned

I coughed him up
And he was dead
So I buried him
In my camper/counselor’s bed

He was my pal
He was my friend
But now he’s gone
And that’s the end

The moral of
This little tale:
If you see a worm
Just don’t inhale”

Nina:
Aaaaand theeee elephant on the spot and the spot on the bug and the bug on the feather and the feather on the bird and the bird on the egg and the egg in the nest and the nest on the leaf and the leaf on the twig and the twig on the branch and the branch on the tree and the tree in the hole and the hole in the ground and the green grass grew all around and the green grass grew all around. [gasp for air]

vegkitty, Tom the Toad! That was really one of the best:
Oh Tom the Toad, oh Tom the Toad!
Why did you hop upon the road!

He was my friend, but now he’s dead!
He bears the marks of tire tread!

Oh Tom the Toad, oh Tom the Toad!
Why did you hop upon the road!

You sat upon the yellow line!
Now you’re just a streak of slime!

Oh Tom the Toad, oh Tom the Toad!
Why did you hop upon the road!

You sat upon the yellow trail!
You’re plastered on the guard rail!

Oh Tom the Toad, oh Tom the Toad!
Why did you hop upon the road!

Seriously, if we get any further into camp songs I am going to fill up the whole thread, so I am going to try to stop. But now I have all of the frog-themed songs popping into my head, so we’re getting into dangerous territory.

Growing up north of Toronto in the ’80s, I sang Miss Mary (Lucy), but the lines in the middle went

Behind the yellow curtain
There was a piece of glass
Miss Mary sat upon it
And hurt her little…
Ask, etc.

I also know Stella Ella Ola with nearly the same words as Dr. Confused.

The other day, I also discovered that The Princess Pat, which I sang in Girl Guides, is actually a badly garbled and bowdlerized version of the regimental song of the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry. There are some notes about the song here: http://dragon.sleepdeprived.ca/songbook/songs4/S4_17.htm

Ah! Kelly! That’s almost the same as the version I knew, just with less “slurp slurp slurp” and more “I don’t feel so good…” and my mother is always proud of me. And then after mopping up you have to wring out your baby bumblebee (“uh oh, sink’s clogged”) and then plunging up your baby bumblebee.

I remember Chartreuse Buzzards too! Except ours were sitting in a dead tree. And we sang sarasponda in Girl Scouts, but not as a rock passing game. Although that reminds me of another passing stuff game we played in Girl Scouts, the Button Game. Everybody sat in a circle with one person in the middle and put one hand open on their left knees; with the other hand, you tapped your neighbor’s hand twice, then your hand twice and sang

Button, button,
How I wonder
How it gets
From one to the other?
Is it fair, is it fair
To keep poor [insert person in the middle’s name] waiting there?

A button (or other small object) was being passed surreptitiously around the circle and the person in the middle had to guess who had it. If they guessed right, they joined the circle and the person caught with the button had to sit in the middle.

Whoa, Henchminion, that’s fascinating! Though I could do without the moralizing tone of the article… come on, dude, you’ve never heard a song you take seriously get mangled or made fun of by schoolchildren? ‘Cause if so, I can tell that at the very least you never went to Hebrew school (“watermelon, gingerale, french fry, pizza pie”).

@volcanista – I was just thinking of the canoe song the other day! We sang it at Girl Scout camp with “He said…” and “Boy swimmin’ all a-/Girl paddlin’ all a-/Moon shinin’ all around.” And we didn’t have the last line.

Also, @Henchminion – I’m with Kelly, you just totally blew my mind! It’s interesting to know the origins of the song though…I mean, the lyrics we sung didn’t make much sense.

Under the brown bushes, under the sea, boom, boom, boom,
True love for you my darlin’, true love for me,
And when we get marrieeeeeed, we’ll have a family,
A boy for you, and a girl for me,
And then we’ll be, ?? at sea.

Wish I could remember goes in the question marks–I want to say Humpty Dumpty, but that make no sense at all…

I also remember Miss Mary Mack (she’s a legend!), and Jingle Bells, Batman Smells, but most of the others are a complete mystery to me!

I’m a nut,
big and round,
I lay on the cold, cold ground
People come, step on me
That is why I’m cracked, you see
I’m a nut (dum dum), I’m a nut (dum dum)
I’m a nut, I’m a nut, I’m a nut (dum dum)

I’m a little N-U-T, I’m as sweet as I can be
I can sing, I can dance,
I wear ruffles on my — whoops, boys take another guess
I wear ruffles on my dress.
I’m a nut (dum dum), I’m a nut (dum dum)
I’m a nut, I’m a nut, I’m a nut (dum dum)

I wish I’d known the words to Pomp & Circumstance back when I was in band (the trombone line for that song is extremely boring) or when I was working security at places that held graduation ceremonies. It would have been much more interesting!

I suspect this one is to the same tune as Volcanista’s doughnut song:

Weeeellll IIIII stuck my head in a little skunk’s hole
And the little skunk said, “Well, bless my soul!
Take it out!
Take it out!
Take it out!
Reeeemooooove it!”

Weeeellll IIIII didn’t take it out and the little skunk said
“If you don’t take it out, you’ll wish you had!
Take it out!
Take it out!
Take it out!
Reeeemooooove it!”

(make a noise like “pssssssssssss”)

I removed it–too late!

And Volcanista, your version of the tree song has more verses than mine! I may steal a few of those. I’ve just got “(gasp)And the elephant was on the feather and the feather was on the wing and the wing was on the bird and the bird was in the egg and the egg was in the nest and the nest was on the twig and the twig was on the branch and the branch was on the limb and the limb was on the tree and the tree was in the ground and the green grass grew all around, all around, and the green grass grew all around.”

Eve, your bear song is the other one I was trying to remember to that tune, thanks!

And Cute Bruiser, those are the other verses I sang – thanks for reminding me! We sang it “Got so fresh I slapped my face,” too, Puffalo.

Also, I can’t believe I’ve never heard the reindeer versions of Pomp & Circumstance. Wish I’d known them too – the clarinet part is slightly less boring than I expect the trombone part was, but the number of times it had to repeated doesn’t bear thinking about. Blech.

Can I just say, I do not know any of these hand clapping games or the rhymes associated with them. The other girls would stand together at lunch in middle school and do them and I could never join the circle, because I had no idea what the hell they were doing. Maybe it’s because I spent elementary school in my room with a book, I don’t know. But I never learned them.

X little angels, all dressed in white, tryin’ to get to heaven on the end of a kite
but the kite broke, and down they all fell
instead of going to heaven, they all went to-
X little devils, all dressed in red, trying to get to heaven on the end of a thread…

Speeakkkinnngggg of Girl Scouts…. (then I really really have to go…)… Is it me or is this just one weird song?

I woke up Monday morning,
I looked upon the wall,
The skeeters and the bedbugs
Were having a game of ball.
The score was six to nothing
The skeeters were ahead
The bedbugs hit a homerun,
And knocked me out of bed.

(For the sake of any anthropologists of children’s culture who might happen on this thread, I’ll add that I didn’t learn the skunk song from my central Iowa peers, I learned it from my Virginian parents.)

See see my playmate
Come out and play with me
And bring your sex machine
If you know what I mean
Right down my brastrap
Into my pantyhose
And we’ll be jolly friends forever more, more, shut the door

In Winnipeg ours was Miss Mary:

Miss Mary had a steamboat
The steamboat had a bell
Miss Mary went to heaven
The steamboat went to…
Hello Operator
Please give me Number Nine
And if you disconnect me
I will kick you from…
Behind the yellow curtain
There was a piece of glass
Miss Mary sat upon it
And broke her big fat…
Ask me no more questions
Tell me no more lies
The boys are in the bathroom
Doing up their…
Flies are in the city
Bees are in the park
Miss Mary and her boyfriend
Are kissing in the D-A-R-K D-A-R-K dark dark

That said, I was in elementary school from 89-95 in north east Ohio, we did Miss Mary Mack, with the elephants, Apple on a Stick, Cinderella Dressed in Yella (jump rope) Shimmy Shimmy Cocoa Pop, and Miss Suzy had a Steamboat.

We also had “Jingle bells Batman smells, Robin laid an egg, Batmobile lost a wheel and the Joker got away!” and the OH so charming

Joy to the world the teacher’s dead
We BBQ’d her head
What happened with the body
We flushed it down the potty
And round and a round it goes
and round and around it goes
around around around it goes

Slyth, I never learned the hand-clap stuff either, though I remember a few of the songs, either from Brownies or my mom (which would make them the 1930’s versions of the songs since that’s when she was a kid).

One bright day in the middle of the night
Two dead boys got up to fight
Back to back they faced each other
Drew their swords and shot each other
A deaf policeman heard the noise
And came and shot the two dead boys.

That’s where the version I know ends.

I haven’t seen this one yet:

Peeping through the keyhole
Of grandpa’s wooden leg
Who’ll wind the clock when I’m gone?
Go get the axe
There’s a flea in Lizzie’s ear
And a boy’s best friend
Is his mother!

I learned Bobo-see as Bubba-ski in Northern California, mid-80s. It sounds pretty close to Babuski to me, isn’t that a last name? I always pictured a little kid learning how to walk and stomping up a storm- boom, boom, boom.

Little Bubba-ski, walkin, talkin,
uh-uh-uh,
boom-boom-boom.

Little Bubba-ski, walkin, talkin,
uh-uh-uh,
boom-boom-boom.

One side,
Two side,
Three side,
Freeze!

(You’d wind up making little guns with your fingers, pointing them across at the other person. The slower person would put their hands up “this is a stick up” style.)

Apples on a stick just make me sick
make my heart go 246
Not because I’m dirty,
Not because I’m clean,
Not because I kissed a boy behind a magazine.
Heyyy, girls!
You wanna have some fun?
Here comes Billy with his pants undone!
He can wiggle, he can wobble, he can do the splits
but most of all, he can kiss kiss kiss!

Alternate ending:
but most of all, he can’t do this
bow to the queen,
kiss the king,
show his legs to the football team!

I am loving how similar/connected these all are. It’s kind of beautiful.

“See see my playmate”! Our second verse was different, more like E’s

See, see, my playmate
I cannot play with you
My Dolly has the flu
Chicken pox and measles too
There is no rainbow
Into the cellar door
But we’ll be best of friends
Forever more more more more more

And the moves were the ones MissPrism knows.

We also (Northern Ireland, 1990s) had

Under the bramble bushes
Down by the sea (boom boom boom)
Johnny broke a bottle and he blamed it on me
I told my mamma
She told my papa
And Johnny got a beating on the B-U-M spells BUM!

There were other verses but they are gone from me.

Also the stunningly racist

I know a little Chinese girl called Eye [touch your eye] Shoe [touch shoe] China [bow]
She said she knew a football team called Eye Shoe China
How is your father?
All right. Died in the fish shop last night.
What did he die of?
Raw fish.
What did he die like?
Like this

rhiannonproblematising, yes! I totally remember the see-see-see one.

I know there’s one that starts I went downtown, I met Miss Brown but I don’t remember the rest. And the alligator purse is really familiar, but I think as a poem rather than a hand game?

I miss clapping games! I did them well into my teens. It might be time to resurrect them.

Also! Does anyone remember the dib-dib-gdib games with all your feet in a circle to decide who was it? I remember

A bottle of sink went down the sink
How many miles did it go?
[person stopped on picks number, e.g. 5]
1 2 3 4 5
You are not on it
[Repeat]

And Emerald, no, I never heard those paper things called anything here.

This is the best post ever. I could never do clapping games as a kid, but I liked the rhymes. XD nth-ing the girl scouts as a source for this stuff (till I got kicked out XD).

The “Miss Lucy” one was always a favourite, but a few differences:

Miss Molly had a steamboat
The steamboat had a bell
Miss Lucy went to heaven
The steamboat went to…
Hello operator
Give me Number Nine
And if you disconnect me
I’ll kick in your…
Behind the yellow curtain
There was a piece of glass
Miss Lucy sat upon it
And broke her little…
Ask me no more questions
I’ll tell you no more lies
The boys are in the bathroom
Zipping up their…
Flies are in the meadow
The bees are in the park
Miss Molly and her boyfriend
Are kissing in the D-A-R-K spells dark!
Dark is like a movie
A movie’s like a show
A show is like a TV show and that is all I know
I know my ma
I know I know my pa
I know I know my sister with the 44 foot (I have no idea why) bra

There are also the wonderful choosing-who’s-it rhymes, with several stopping places so you got to decide who was it. XD

Eenie meenie miney mo
Catch a tiger by the toe
If he hollers let him go
Eenie meenie miney mo (Could stop here)
My mother told me to choose the very best one (Could stop here)
Not because you’re dirty
Not because you’re clean
Just because you kissed a boy
Behind a magazine

It’s awesome to see how the some of the same rhymes got changed as they spread out and moved around. (The linguist in me really wants to research this, but the last thing I need is another project!)
Growing up in 90s mid-Michigan, we had this one:

Miss Suzy had a tugboat
The tugboat had a bell
Miss Suzy went to heaven
The steamboat went to-
Hello Operator
Give me Number Nine
And if you disconnect me
I will kick you right-
Behind the refrigerator
There lay a piece of glass
Miss Suzy fell upon it
And broke her little-
Ask me no more questions
Tell me no more lies
Miss Suzy told me all of this
The day before she-
Dyed her hair all purple
She dyed her hair all pink
She dyed her hair in polka dots
And washed it in the sink-
Me in the ocean,
Sink me in the sea
Sink me in the toilet,
But please don’t pee on me!

With the Girl Scouts we had the same sort of circle clapping game where the one who didn’t pull her hand out of the way at the end ‘lost’. I think that this one probably wouldn’t have flown had there been any Spanish-speakers in the area. ^_^()

I grew up in Girl Scouts, as a camp director’s daughter to boot, so i know a version of many of these songs (Ethyl I had forgotten about the skeeters and the bedbugs!). I lived in from age 5 on: Virginia (2years), Maine (5years), Connecticut(2.5 years) and Washington (2.5 years) between 82 and 95 (when i graduated but I was still an active scout). I have so many i love i’m just going to mention a few.

it is mentioned above but one of my favorites (learned in Maine) i know with different words

As an adult now active in scouts I am always amazed at the subtle diffferences in regional songs and games.

And an addition to the horrified by catagory, I learned this circle game as a Leader in Washington a few years back. My troop doesn’t play this one.

Ride Ride Ride My Pony
Get up and ride that BIG FAT pony
Ride Ride Ride that pony
This is how it’s done!

front front front my pony (girls in circle shimmy their chests)
(girls jump around so they’re sideways in the circle)
side side side my pony (shimmy to the side)
(girls jump around so they’re facing out)
back back back my pony (girls shake their butts)
(girls jump around so they’re sideways in the circle)
side side side my pony (shimmy to the side)
this is how it’s done!

(the girl in the center is galloping/skipping around the inside of the circle throughout both verses and whoever she stops by at the the end of verse two trades places with her)

I was in primary school from 1989-1994 in the UK and these are the clapping games/songs I remember from that period:

‘My boyfriend’s name is Winkletoes and he lives in a town called Wrinklenose
With a curled up nose and wrinkled toes, this is how my story goes
One day he gave me peaches
One day he gave me pears
One day he gave me fifty pence and kissed me on the stairs
He took me to the movies
He took me to the fairs
And every time I turned my head, he kissed the girl next door to me
So I gave him back his peaches
And I gave him back his pears
I gave him back his fifty pence and kicked him down the stairs
I kicked him over England
I kicked him over France
I kicked him over Africa and saw his underpants’

and:

‘All the girls in Spain wash their knickers in champagne
All the boys in France do the hula hula dance
And the dance they do is enough to tie a shoe
And the shoe they tie is enough to tell a lie
And the lie they tell is enough to ring a bell
And the bell they ring goes ding a ling a ling’

There was another one that included the lines (previously mentioned above) ‘what did she die of?Raw fish. How did she die?Like this!’ (falls backwards) but the rest of that one is a blur, unfortunately.

It’s so cool seeing the commonalities and differences between the rhymes we all learnt, especially given the variety of ages and nationalities!

This is so much fun! We did “say say my playmate” just like fillyjonk, but we said “shout down my rain barrel, slide down my cellar door”.

RP, we had almost the same Place on Mars chant (in New Jersey) but it was a little longer.

There’s a place on Mars
Where the women smoke cigars
And the men wear bikinis
And the children drink martinis
Every breath you take
Is enough to kill a snake
When the snake is dead
You put roses on its head
When the roses die
You put diamonds in its eye
When the diamonds crack
You put mustard on its back
When the mustard fades
You call the Ace of Spades
And the Ace of Spades says FREEZE!

And am I the only one that sang “Aggravation”? It went something like:

Aggravation, rehabilitation
Aggravation, this is how you play
First you take a bowling ball
Then you roll it down the hall
Hit your dad
Make him mad
Oh-oh-oh-oh
Aggravation…

There were a lot of verses but the only other one I can vaguely remember is about putting a plastic bag over your head and not being able to breathe and dying. Cheerful!

I don’t know any hand jives. My mom was appalled when she found this out when I was 16. She spent the whole day trying to teach me Miss Mary Mack. She gave up and I got pissed because I was too uncoordinated. I also don’t know how to double dutch, skip solo rope, hula hoop, roller skate, ride a bike, skateboard or how to play the street game skelly (http://www.streetplay.com/skully/). I do know how to play jacks and hopscotch, though. I think somebody somewhere is going to take away Black ghetto-kid street cred. lmao.

Gimme a break, gimme a break
Break me off a piece of that Kit-Kat bar
Chocolatey wafers make my day
All around the town you hear the people say
Gimme a break, gimme a break
Break me off a piece of that, break me off a piece of that
Break me off a piece of that Kit-Kat bar

Sarv, my X-rated version (Nova Scotia, early 1990s) was similar to yours:

See, see my boyfriend
Come out and play with me
And bring your blankets three
In case of pregnancy
Slide down my bra strap
Into my booby trap
And we’ll be jolly friends
Forever more, more, shut the damn door

Zenoodle and Sarah! I had a Mary version of your Susie, but it must have the same root:

When Mary was a baby, she always went like this:
Whaa, whaa.
When Mary was a child, she always went like this:
Whaa, whaa.
Gimme a sucker!
When Mary was a teenager, she always went like this:
Whaa, whaa.
Gimme a sucker!
Ooh! Aah! Lost my bra!
When Mary was a mother, she always went like this:
Whaa, whaa.
Gimme a sucker!
Ooh! Aah! Lost my bra!
Where’s my makeup? Where’s my brush?
When Mary was a grandmother, she always went like this:
Whaa, whaa.
Gimme a sucker!
Ooh! Aah! Lost my bra!
Where’s my makeup? Where’s my brush?
Ooh, my back aches.
When Mary was in heaven, she always went like this:
Whaa, whaa.
Gimme a sucker!
Ooh! Aah! Lost my bra!
Where’s my makeup? Where’s my brush?
Ooh, my back aches.
What am I doing here?
When Mary was in hell, she always went like this:
Whaa, whaa.
Gimme a sucker!
Ooh! Aah! Lost my bra!
Where’s my makeup? Where’s my brush?
Ooh, my back aches.
What am I doing here?
AAAAH!

Both had boths hands out, and each hand slaps the next, clockwise, and when you said 4, you tried to slap the other’s hand and they tried to avoid it.

Also, another girl scout song.

Girl scout camp, girl scout camp,
the water that they give you, they say it’s mighty fine
but when you take a sip of it it tastes like turpentine!
Oh, I don’t wanna go to girl scout camp!
Gee Mom, I wanna go back where the water flows, Gee Mom, I wanna go hooooome.

Add verses like:
the toilets that they give you, they say they’re mighty fine
but you sit upon them, it chops off your behind

Lu, I JUST remembered that and was considering posting about it! My mom told us about the suffocation song, which is also to the tune of Alouette (like I expect your Aggravation song probably is). Apparently it was popular when she was a kid:

Suffocation, Remco Suffocation
Suffocation, the game we love to play!
First you take a plastic bag
Then you put it on your head
Plastic bag, on your head
Go to bed, wake up dead
Ohhhhhhhh

This thread is amusing, but I feel the need to say that no, not ALL girls know hand jives. I recall some other girls trying to teach me when I was little, but I never caught on. I was too busy being a tomboy, anyway.

Grew up in Northwestern NJ in the 1970s. Never, not once, not at school or during the summer or in the decade I spent in Girl Scouts did I ever see or hear any girls doing any of the hand games you are all describing. There were a few jump-rope chants, but as I was busy playing kickball or football or baseball with the guys I never took part. I didn’t see any hand jives or chanting until I moved to Washington DC as an adult. So “all girls” doesn’t actually mean all females, does it?

Volcanista…I think your ooh shawadawada could’ve been where Nas got “oochie wally wally” And Nelly used “shimmy shimmy cocoa pop” in Country Grammar. Are any of these other songs inspirations for rap songs :D

2-4-6-8
Who do we appreciate?
[name], [name]
Not because she’s dirty, not because she’s clean
Just beacause she kissed a boy behind a magazine.
Hey, girls! Wanna have some fun?
Here comes [boy’s name] with his pants undone!
He can wiggle, he can waggle, he can do the splits
But most of all he can KISS KISS KISS!!

also a horrible one, really too horrible to write, about rape, to the tune of “Tarara Boom-de-ay”.

Actually I could go on and on, I know tons of these. What a walk down memory lane!!

There’s this one particularly morbid one I love that a singer I like remade. It’s one of the ‘Miss Lucy’ ones. It goes:

Miss Lucy had some leeches
Her leeches liked to suck
And when they drank up all her blood
She didn’t give a
Funny when the doctors
Had locked her in her cell
Miss Lucy screamed all night that they
Should go to bloody
Hello to the surgeon
With scalpel old and blunt
He’ll tie you to the table
Then he’ll mutilate your
Come it’s nearly teatime
The lunatics arrive
The keepers bleed them all until
There’s no one left a
Lively little rodents
Are eaten up by cats
We’re subject to experiments
Like laboratory
Rats I’ve dropped a teacup
How easily they break
I’m on my hands and knees until
I pay for my mis-
Take off all your clothing
We’ve only just begun
We have no anesthesia
It’s eighteen forty
One thing we should tell you
Before you try again
The tests are all invented by
A lot of filthy
Mentally hysteric
She’s failed the exam
Don’t bother telling Lucy for
She doesn’t give a
Damn that nitrous oxide
For when you can’t escape
They say the surgeons oft commit
A murder or a
Razor blades are rusty
And not a lot of fun
So when they try to amputate
Your legs you’d better
Run and fetch the chemist
A patient’s feeling sad
She’s been in chains for ages
And she isn’t even
Madness is a nuisance
And no one is immune
Your sister, mum or daughter
May become a raving
Lunatics are dangerous
And doctors are obeyed
They also go together just
Like toast and marma-
Ladies are like children
With brains the size of squirrels
Let’s give a clitoridectomies
To all the little
Girls are helpless treasures
That daddies must protect
So lie upon the table
For the doctors to in-
Speculums are super
And stirrups all the rage
So spread a lady’s legs and then put her
Back in to her
Cage of naked crazies
The surgeon’s here to bleed
The doctors are all learned men
And some can even
Reading can be risky
For women on the verge
It only did us worlds of good
To poison, leech and
Purging is a penance
Phlebotomy’s a chore
No need to sterilize the tools
We never did be-
Fore the night is over
Before you go to bed
They’ll take a hammer and a nail
And jam it in your
Headstones in the courtyard
And statues in the park
Are not for the insane
Just leave them rotting in the
D A R K
Dark
Dark
Dark
Dark
Dark

Wow, this has really been a trip down memory lane. I do have to add some verses to the Titanic song though (which although not a clapping song, does involve some hand motions). I, too, learned it at Girl Scout Camp (Camp Greenhill baby!!)

Oh they built the ship Titanic, to sail the ocean blue.
and they thought they built a ship that the water wouldn’t go through.
But the good lord raised his hands, said that ship would never land,
It was sad when the great ship went down.

CHORUS
It was sad, (so sad)
So very sad, (too bad)
It was sad when the great ship went down
To the bottom of the seeeeeeeaaaa (Husbands and wives, little children lost their lives/Uncles and Aunts, little children lost their pants/Ma’s & Pa’s, little children lost their bras)
It was sad when the great ship went down.

They were not far from England, and headed for the shore (?? why headed FOR the shore??)
Where the rich refused to associate with the poor.
So they put them down below where they’d be the first to go.
It was sad when the great ship went down.

CHORUS

Well they built another ship called the SS 42
And they thought they built a ship that the water wouldn’t go through
But they christened it with beer, and it sank right off the pier
It was sad when the great ship went down.

CHORUS

Well the moral of the story is very plain to see
Always wear a life preserver when you go out to sea
Cuz the good lord’ll raise his hands and say that ship will never land
It was sad when the great ship went down.

CHORUS

After the final chorus when it says “It was sad when the great ship went down” we added on:

To the ground,
It sunk, kerplunk,
9, 10, do it again,
The end, AMEN!

To the Camp’s credit (I guess), some of the older campers did as their camp presentation how wearing a life preserver actually would NOT have helped the passengers of the Titanic, so even though it’s a super-fun song, it’s not entirely accurate. I thought that was really a good thing to do.

Also, I always thought it said “it was sad when the GRAY ship went down” until I realized the Titanic was not gray. LOL!

Does anyone remember a different ending to “shimmy shimmy cocoa puffs”? I’ve been trying to remember, but I wasn’t very involved in playground rhyme games so I can’t remember. I grew up in NE ohio in the late 80’s.

Also, I know a couple more verses to that wiffer-woffer thing:
I was walking round the corner, doing little harm
When along came a policeman and grabbed me by the arm
He took me to the jailhouse, rang a little bell
And along came a jailer and locked me in a cell.

and

At 5:00 in the morning the jailer came around
He had some bread and coffee that weighed a half a pound
The coffee tastes like tobacco juice, the bread was hard and stale
But that’s the way they treat the bums in NY county jail

Oh man. So much memories. I actually took notes while reading through all 328 comments (holy cow!). So I’ll go through what I knew growing up in the 90s (born 1991) in Tucson, AZ. Here comes epic long comment. Sorry in advance.

Mis Mary Mack, but I can only remember the first four lines and none of the versions anybody else has look right.

Miss Suzy had a steamboat the steamboat had a bell ding ding the steamboat went to heaven miss suzy went to hello operator please give me number 9 the boys are in the bathroom zipping up the flies are in the meaadow the bees are in the park and miss suzy and her boyfriend are sitting in the D-A-R-K D-A-R-K dark dark dark! The dark is like a movie, the movie’s like a show, the show is like a tv show and that is all I know! I know I know my ma, I know I know my pa, I know I know my sister with the 40 acre bra! My ma is godzilla, my pa is king kong, and my sister is the stupid one who made up this whole song song song!

Everyone ever seems to have a different version of the Hanky Panky – I knew it as: Down by the banks of the hanky panky where the bullfrogs jump from banky to banky with an eep eyep ohp owp something something kerplop.

I knew Cinderella dressed in yella as a jumprope rhyme.

Also a jumprope rhyme someone else mentioned a variation of this: “ice cream soda pop cherry on top, who’s your boyfriend let’s find out!” and then going through the alphabet over and over until you missed and the letter you missed on was the first letter of your boyfriend’s name. I remember intentionally tripping.

Another clapping game: “Chinese checkers I can do karate chinese checkers I can move my body” and there may have been more but I can’t remember it.

The parody I know of jingle bells: Jingle bells, batman smells, robin laid an egg! batmobile’s lost its wheel and joke did ballet-ey!

Fairly horrible altered song: “On top of spaghetti, all covered in blood, I shot my poor , with a 44 slug, I went to his funeral, I went to his grave, some people threw flowers, I threw a grenade. I read in the newspaper, that he wasn’t quite dead, so I took a bazooka, and I blew off his head.” There are more verses, I believe involving both a barbecue and a toilet, but I can’t remember them.

Also knew just this short version of: “There’s a place in france where the naked ladies dance there’s a hole in the wall where the men can see it all.” I was trying to think of that while reading through, glad someone had it down!

Did anybody else know the cup game? You had to have those good red plastic cups for it, anything else tended to break to all hell. I love that game.

Fillyjonk, a girl I went to middle school with knew that version of ten in the bed, I’d never heard it before then.

Picking who’s it rhymes: “Eeenie meeny mieny noe, catch a tiger by the toe, my mother says to pick the very best one and you are it” (with “for the rest of your life” added onto the end if the picker was unsatisfied with the original result.) Also, “Inka binka bottle of ink, cork fell out and you stink”

I know wadiliachee as: “Wadiliachee, wadaliachee, doodly-doo, doodly-doo, waddiliachee, wadiliachee, doodly-doo, doodly-doo. Simplest thing there isn’t much too is, all you gotta do is doodly-doo it, I like the rest but the part I like best goes doodly-doodly-doo.” Can’t remember the gestures at all.

I also always refused to do Bloody Mary.

I knew the bumblebee song as: “I’m bringing home a baby bumblebee, won’t my mommy be so proud of me I’m bringing home a baby bumblebee, ouch! it stung me! I’m squishing up the baby bumblebee, won’t my mommy be so proud of me I’m squishing up the baby bumblebee, yuck! what a mess!, I’m licking up the baby bumblebee, won’t my mommy be so proud of me I’m licking up the baby bumblebee, ugh, I don’t feel so good…. I’m throwing up the baby bumblebee, won’t me mommy be so proud of me, I’m throwing up the baby bumblebee, yuck! what a mess!” and the last two verses repeated until you got bored of singing it. Yeah, ew.

The “but you can’t pay the rent!” thing I knew well and it also reminds me of There’s A Hole In The Bucket.

We had cootie catchers and called them that. We also did fingerweaving with yarn. I’m not sure I can explain how to do it.

Another version of the highly oxymoronic little story: “Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, I come before you, to stand behind you, to tell you a story I know nothing about. Down in a valley high on a hill there was a red house painted green and in this house lived two dead boys. One fine day in the middle of the night, the two dead boys started a fight. Back to back they faced each other, drew their swords and shot each other. A deaf policeman heard the noise, came and killed the two dead boys. If you don’t believe this lie is true, and the blind man, he saw it too.”

Lu and volcanista, I know that song! There are several verses!: “Suffocation, jolly suffocation, suffocation jolly oh-dee-ay. First you take a pillowcase, then you put it on your face, go to bed, then you’re dead! Oh-oh-oh-oh. Suffocation, jolly suffocation, suffocation jolly oh-dee-ay. First you take a garden hose then you stick it up your nose turn it on then you’re gone oh-oh-oh-oh! Corporal punishment jolly corporal punishment corporal punnishment jolly oh-dee-ay. First you take a bowling ball then you roll it down the hall hits your dad then he’s mad oh-oh-oh-oh! Defenestration defenestration nation defenestration, jolly oh-dee-ay. First you take your friend-oh, throw ‘em out them window, big splat, very flat, oh-oh-oh-oh!” That really is a quite horrible song.

My class also had the dead moose song – anyone familiar with it? This comment is long enough so I wo’t write it out :P We also had a dead chicken variation.

There was a rhyme containing “not because I’m dirty not because I’m clean just because I kissed a boy behind a magazine” but I haven’t the foggiest what it was and nobody else’s contexts for it are familiar. Bah.

Our version of Comet was: “Comet, it makes your teeth turn green! Comet, it tastes like gasoline, comet, it makes you vomit! So get your comet, and vomit, todaaaaay. Comet, it makes your teeth turn blue! Comet, it tastes like doggie doo, comet, it makes you vomit! So get your comet, and vomit, todaaaay.” Aand then we had the verse about one of my classmates we added on: “Comet! It makes you look like Mia! Comet! It gives you diarrhea! Comet! it makes you vomit! So get your comet, and vomit, todaaaaaay.” Oddly, Mia was fairly popular.

I remember the existence of the rose garden thing on the arms but I cannot for the life of me remember how it goes. I can remember my best friend Claire doing it to me, though.

Another jump-rope rhyme someone mentioned: “Teddy bear teddy bear turn around, teddy bear teddy bear touch the ground. Teddy bear teddy bear tie your shoes, teddy bear teddy bear .” And then I think another verse or two I can’t recall before “Teddy bear teddy bear turn out the light, teddy bear teddy bear say goodnight!” All with actions you had to do while jumping rope. I was quite bad at that one.

All the frog songs people have mentioned have reminded me of Ten Green And Speckled Frogs and also my clear memory of my class learning Jeremiah Was A Bullfrog in elementary school, which is utterly bizarre because, um, Joy To The World by Three Dog Night has a lot of alcohol references at the very least.

Something reminded me of the skit about oranges, fifty cents, as fresh as fresh can be – I can’t remember it properly, anyone know it?

There’s also a really long annoying song called Stay On The Sunny Side which youo sing fasterandfasterandfaster and I’m not going to type it unless someone wants to know because long comment :P

Someone mentioned tongue twisters, was my middle school class the only one that did peter piper doubling or tripling all of the p’s? It makes it harder. Also, my grandma has a jokebook that lists ‘rubber baby buggy bumpers’ as ‘there’s blood on the rubber baby buggy bumpers’, which creeps me out.

NOBODY HAS MENTIONED JOHN JACOB JINGLEHEIMER SMITH WHAT IS THIS TRAVESTY.

While we’re on Girl Scouts songs, I learned this while camping with my BFF’s brother’s Cub Scout troop:

(tune is Battle Hymn of the Republic)

I wear my pink pajamas in the summer when it’s hot
I wear my flannel nighty in the winter when it’s not
But sometimes in the springtime,
and sometimes in the fall,
I jump between the sheets with nothing on at all!
Glory, glory hallelujah.
glory, glory, what’s it to ya?
Balmy breezes blowing through ya with nothing on at all!

I had a ton of these growing up. I remember Miss Mary Mack and her elephants with their fence jumping. I remember shimmy shimmy coco pop. I even remember “Concentrate” and all the other putting people in trances games (including Light as a feather, stiff as a board– I was a morbid kid, loved all that). My bullfrog one went on for longer, but I couldn’t remember what happened next, I had to Google the lyrics but I knew exactly when I found the right one, it even mentions the local mall! Doesn’t get more regional than that, and here it is:

Down by the river with the hanky panky
Where the bullfrogs jump from bank to banky
Singing E, I, O, U, your mama stinks and so do you
King Kong, Donkey Kong, went to school with nothing on
Asked the teacher what to wear, polka dotted underwear!
Not too big and not too small, just the size of Broward Mall
I pledge allegiance to the flag, Michael Jackson makes me gag
Pepsi cola burnt him up, now we’re drinking 7-up
7-up has no caffeine, now we’re singing Billy Jean
Billy Jean is out of sight, now we’re talking dynamite
Dynamite blew up the school, now we’re talking really cool
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Whoever was clapped on one was I guess out. Actually I remember that my first ever exposure to Michael Jackson was through these rhymes, I remember quite a few featured him. We also had a lot of songs about killing our teachers and burning down the school, you know, innocent schoolyard games!

Girl Scouts was much cleaner than school for sure. We had a nice march we liked to sing:

Left, left, left right left (x2)
My back is aching, my bra’s too tight
My booty’s shaking from left to right
Mmm, mmm gour
Girl Scouts is power!
Hit it!

I grew up with this version of shimmy shimmy cocoa pop (and yes, we did steal it from Sesame Street).

We also did:
My name is
Elvis Presley
Girls are sexy
Boys are rotten
Made out of cotton
Jump in the lake and swallow a snake
And go home with a bellyache

On the last line you would try to tickle the other person in the belly to give them the bellyache.

We also had this charming song for long bus rides:
Across the desert, across white sands
I killed my poor teacher with a red rubber band
I went to her funeral I went to her grave
Some people threw flowers, I threw a grenade
The coffin went up, the coffin went down
The coffin went splat all over the ground
She opened the coffin she wasn’t quite dead
So I got a bazooka and blew off her head
We got a new teacher, she sure was a pain
So I got a vacuum cleaner and sucked out her brain.

OMG the cup game! Weird, though, we always did the first set of taps on the cup itself. I think it looks neater that way. Maybe those flimsy cups can’t take it. You need some solid plastic cups.

You guys remember that hand slapping table game? The one where everyone crosses arms over their neighbor with hands on the table, and you slap the table as you go around the circle? I was pretty good at that game.

I remember the one “Say say my playmate”, as “See see my playmate” but uncorrupted it suddenly makes a lot more sense. It is different slightly throughout, but the most noteable difference to me is that “Slide down my rainbow” is “Slide down the drainpipe” in the version I know.

It made me think of this (paraphrasing Eddie Izzard)
“I wanna be an astronaut.”
“Well, you’re British, so scale it down a bit.”
“Ok I want to work in a shoe shop.”
“You’re British, scale it down a bit.”

Oh man! Well over 300 comments which I will read with much care later!

I know bits of these as jump-rope rhymes (ca 1960, Michigan).

I had a little brother
His name was Tiny Tim
I put him in the bathtub
To teach him how to swim

He drank up all the water
He ate up all the soap
And he died
In the night
With a bubble
In his throat.

Our clapping games had to do with little rubber balls and jacks. They were very complicated but I don’t remember how to do them.

This is all from the era of kids bringing marbles to school and driving the teachers crazy with the marbles. We valued steelies and puries the most, with steelie boulders and purie boulders being the very best. Some kids would only play for keeps, and if you played them you’d probably loose your marbles and their big bag of marbles would get even bigger. Marbles that got seen in the classroom by the teacher got confiscated. Marbles got shown-off (and even traded) in the classroom in secret.

There’s a place in France
Where the naked ladies dance
And the dance they do
Was invented by a shoe
But the shoe couldn’t dance
So they kicked him in the laces
And the laces that he wore
Cost a dollar ninety-four
No tax

wow! These posts are awesome! I forgot a lot of these. I have an ending to Ms. Suzy had a baby that we used to do.

Ms. Suzy had a baby
His name was tiny Tim
She put him in the bathtub
to see if he could swim
He drank up all the water
He ate up all the soap
He tried to eat the bathtub but it wouldn’t fit down his throat
Ms. Suzy called the doctor
The doctor called the nurse
the nurse called the lady with the alligator purse
In came the doctor
in came the nurse
in came the lady with the alligator purse
Penicillin said the doctor
penicillin said the nurse
penicillin said the lady with the alligator purse
out went the doctor
out went the nurse
out went the lady with the alligator purse

There’s a place on mars
where the woman smoke cigars
every breath they take is enough to kill a snake
when the snakes are dead
they put roses on their head
when the roses die
it’s a dollar ninety five
but the men don’t car
‘cuz they chew their underwear

…I know there is another one to this tune that starts with, “there is a place in France where the men and woman dance…or the naked ladies dance” or something like that but I didn’t know that one very well.

I know E’s version of “See, see oh playmate”–also from my grandma by way of my mom. And this oh-so-charming one. From a childhood friend who was a Mormon (something my Waspy little Episcopalian self found endlessly fascinating.)

Tamara Jaber, an Australian singer known mostly for being Kyle Sandilands’ wife (and Kyle Sandilands is an Australian radio host known for basically being a complete dickhead), had a song based on some of these rhymes. It was fairly awful. YouTube is stuffing me around, but if you’re curious, search for her name. The song I’m talking about is the one that starts “Ooh, aah”.

I never learned any clapping to go with any of the songs (too klutzy!) but in North Carolina in the early 70’s, our “Miss Lucy’s baby,” Tiny Tim, turned cannibalistic and then gassy at the end of the song.

Right after “‘Chicken pox!’ said the lady with the alligator purse,” it went into:

wow–for someone who never had that many friends growing up, and wasn’t particularly girly, I remember a ton of them!

In addition to Ms. Lucy, Ms. Mary Mack, the Comet song, and lots of others, we would sing “Bungalow Bar [an ice cream pop brand], tastes like tar, the more you eat it the sicker you are”

Also, we did one that included the lines:
[person] on the bottom, [person s/he allegedly had a crush on] on the top, something in the middle going flippety-flop. Three months later, all was well; six months later, started to swell. Nine months later, out he came– little [boy mentioned above] junior, swinging his chain.

Coming from Lethbridge, AB, Canada around the early nineties and Vancouver, BC, Canada through the mid-to-late nineties, here.

We sang ‘see see my boyfriend[or playmate, or sexfriend, or sexmate – little kids don’t make much sense, heh], come out and f*ck with me, and bring your condoms three, in case of pregnancy’ and ended with ‘and we’ll be jolly friends [or gay – hooray, homophobia!], forever more! more! jollyjollymoremore!’ but otherwise went just like Julia’s version.

Our Miss Suzy went like this:

Miiiiiiiiiiiss Suzy had a steamboat
The steamboat had a bell
When Miss Suzy went to Heaven
The steamboat went to
Hello, operator
Give me number nine
And if you disconnect me
I’ll chop off your
Behind the ‘fridgerator
There was a piece of glass
Miss Suzy sat upon it
And broke her stupid
Ask me no more questions
I’ll tell you no more lies
The boys are in the bathroom
Pissing on their
Flies are in the city
The bees are in the park
Miss Suzy and her boyfriend
Are kissing in the D-A-R-K-D-A-R-K
Dark is like a movie
A movie’s like a show
A show is like a cartoon
And that is all I
Know I know my mother
I know I know my pa
I know I know my sister with a forty-acre bra!

Sometimes it just left off at ‘d-a-r-k-d-a-r-k dark dark dark!’ after the bit about our protagonist and her gentleman friend. Sometimes you’d add ‘boom boom boom!’ after the bra, which was accompanied with shaking your chest in a rather provocative manner.

We also had a Coca Cola one:

Coca Cola went to town
Pepsi Cola shot him down
Dr Pepper fixed him up
Now you’re drinking 7up
7up caught the flu
Now you’re drinking Mountain Dew
Mountain Dew fell off the mountain
Now you’re drinking from the fountain
Fountain’s broke
Now you’re back to drinking COKE!

That was sometimes done in a hand-slapping circle, in which case the person who got hit on COKE was out if they didn’t pull their hand away – but if you pulled your hand away before COKE, you were out anyway. It was rather tricky.

Speaking of hand-slap-circles, our version of Stella Ella Olla was slightly different from those mentioned previously as well:

There’s a place in France
Where the naked ladies dance
There’s a hole in the wall
Where the men can see them all
But the men don’t care
Cause they’re in their underwear

And one I haven’t seen show up so far:

I see London, I see France!
I see ___name___’s underpants!
I see Saxon, I see Gaul!
Hey ___name___, I can see it all!
PULL DOWN YOUR SKIRT!

‘Hey’ is omitted if the target’s name is too long, and for some reason, sometimes ‘shirt’ was substituted for ‘skirt’.
Also, not only are hand-jives not universal among girls, they aren’t universally unknown among boys! My own gentleman friend likes very much to play Pattycake (which just has ‘Baby’ instead of the name of a baby, in the version I learned, and is ‘put it in the oven’ rather than ‘pitch’, which seems like it might result in a ruined cake and a rather messy oven), Miss Suzy, and Place in France with me, and even helped me teach the standard hand movements to our S.O., who grew up without them.

Just to let you know how oooooold a lot of this stuff is, we had the “Miss Lucy” (both the “steamboat” and “Tiny Tim” versions), “The Littlest Worm,” and “Say Say My Playmate/Enemy” in suburban north central New Jersey in the early 1970s, pretty much exactly as written here.

Only our “broken glass” rhyme went:

Behind the ‘frigerator
There lies a piece of glass
And if you sit upon it
It will cut you on your…ask me no more questions (etc.)

And yep, the Titanic song. Only we had an “alternate version,” which we’d sing after the “official” one:

Oh they built the ship Titanic to sail the ocean blue
And they thought it had the power of a broken-down canoe
So they christened it with beer
And it fell right off the pier
It was sad when that great ship went down.

Oh it was sad
Oh it was sad
It was sad when that great ship went down
To the bottom of the
Uncles and aunts
Little children lost their pants
It was sad when that great ship went down.

I wonder about the “shimmy shimmy cocoa puff” thing. There was a song in the late 1950s called “Shimmy-Shimmy Ko-Ko Bop” by Little Anthony and the Imperials, a silly little number about a “native girl” who “taught me a dance that put me in a trance.” I don’t know whether the song was based on that chant, or vice versa, but it’s the same hook. (About 25 years later, Little Anthony appeared on television — I think it was Alan Thicke’s show — and was asked about that song. He made a face and said, “That’s got to be the worst song ever written.”)

JM, I was in the St. Paul burbs in the late 1980s, early 1990s, and we had a similar chant in maybe 5th or 6th grade that kids did while poking at each other’s backs. I’ll try to give the actions in parentheses:

Let’s go treasure-hunting (4 pokes, like feet walking up the back)
X marks the spot (make an X on the back, then poke the middle of it)
Line, line, line, line, circle and a dot. (pretty much what it sounds like)
Spiders crawling up your back, (tickling motion up toward neck)
Crack an egg (make an egg-cracking gesture over the head)
(blow on back of neck)
You’ve got the goosebumps!

I, like DRST, grew up in Upstate NY, but I was in a rural area and my only real playmates were my siblings. So pretty much everything I know, I learned from Girl Scouts, and my mother–Scout leader, nursery school teacher, former camp counselor…

To this day I will sing to the cats about how it was sad, so sad, it was sad, so sad, it was sad when the great ship went down–the cats because, you know, husbands and wives, little kitties (kiddies) lost their lives, it was sad when the great ship went down!

And I’m trying to remember the rest of the fish rhyme–all I’ve got is this:

He said, “Swim, little fishies, swim as fast as you can, and they swam and they swam right over the dam!”

And then the ish-boom-biddy-biddy-waddam-chu! stuff.

Oh, and a Halloween one, since it’s that time of year:

One little, two little, three little witches
Flying over haystacks, flying over ditches
Sliding down the moon without any hitches
Hey, ho, Halloween’s here!

I’m a couple days late for this, but I had to put in my 2cents anyway. Most of the handjive and jumprope rhymes I grew up with in the schoolyards have been mentioned here (eeny meeny sicileeny –which had the most complicated hand movements ever; Miss Mary Mack– of whihc we had a dirty version I can’t quite recall; Down Down Baby –my version was Shimmy Shimmy Coco Puffs and of course Miss Lucy) but although I tried to find them in the thread I didn’t see the three simplest ones which were the first ones I was taught by my friends. Sorry if these were posted and I missed them.

Doggy doggy diamond
says to step right out.
Not because you’re dirty
not because you’re clean
just because you kissed a boy
behind a dirty magazine.

This was typically done to count off “doggies” (the fists of all participants arranged around one main person) while that person counted off each syllable. If the verse ended on your fist you were out. This was used to pick team members, best friends, who to pick on that day etc.

The other 2 were used in the same manner, or were used to count jumprope skips.

Fudge, Fudge
Call the Judge
Someone’s having a baby (someone = the name of whoever is jumping rope)
Her Papa’s going crazy

There’s more to the rhyme that I can’t remember. It has to do with counting off the letters of the alphabet to find the babydaddy name.

And finally:

Bubblegum, bubblegum
in a dish
how many pieces do you wish?

There was another one that I can’t quite remember that involved donald duck and might have been on the slightly vulgar side (for 8 year olds anyway).

Um, clapping games… I was always really bad at them – I have lousy rhythm. I remember something about boyfriend’s cars and bras and kicking her down the stairs. Hmm, way to normalise domestic violence.

This wasn’t a clapping game but our favourite schoolyard chant was “Jingle Bells, Batman smells, Robin ran away, Wonder Woman lost her bra flying TAA.” I understand that, since TAA no longer exists, the last line is now different and not nearly as entertaining (it doesn’t involve bras).

Katia^^& above, in decades following yours I believe we added an epilogue to the K-I-S-S-I-N-G song — to wit, (boy’s name) issuckin’ his thumb
wettin’ his pants
doin’ the hu-la hu-la dance

which I always found to be a very compelling image set.

Also, FJ, a “say say oh playmate” 2nd verse variant
(we had no enemies in our childhood – and if you believe that there’s this bridge … anyhoo):so sorry playmate
I cannot play with you
my dolly has the flu
boo hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo

slide down my rain barrel
slide down my cellar door
and we’ll be jolly friends
forever more forever more

*nostalgic sigh*
Is there some sort of book in this? These Things All Women Know?
(with no “should”s included?)
:-) :-) :-)

“Fudge, Fudge
Call the Judge
Someone’s having a baby (someone = the name of whoever is jumping rope)
Her Papa’s going crazy”

There’s more to the rhyme that I can’t remember. It has to do with counting off the letters of the alphabet to find the babydaddy name.

“if the baby’s a girl, give it a twirl
and if it’s a boy, then give it a toy
wrap it up in tissue paper
send it down the elevator
first floor – STOP!
second floor- STOP!
third floor – you never say stop till …”

and then you jump till you miss. Good thing we didn’t think too much about the imagery.
:-D
(It scares me a little that I still remember these things.)

I actually remember the paranormal aspect of the Concentration game! At the end of the game, after being pushed off the Empire State building, everyone would ask you what color you saw, and the color you saw predicted… something. (As I recall, it mostly predicted that everyone would spend the next 20 minutes arguing about what “orange” meant.)

I also have some Girl Scout camp songs that I don’t think anyone has mentioned yet. One is to the tune of “Barges”, the song that goes

Out of my window, looking in the night,
I can see the barges’ flickering lights
[Something about port and starboard and red and green, which I could never remember even when I was at camp]
I can see the barges far ahead.

Barges, I would like to go with you,
I would like to sail the ocean blue.
Barges, have you treasures in your hold,
Do you fight with pirates brave and bold?

We would sing that at camp-sanctioned campfires, and then we would sing the DEEPLY HILARIOUS version:

Out of my tent flap, looking in the night,
I can see the counselors — ew! What a sight!
Curlers in their hair, and cold cream on their face,
They could scare a turtle to a very fast pace. [Not a lot that rhymes with “face”, I guess.]

Counselors, I would like to go with you,
I would like to cruise through town with you.
Counselors, do not throw me in the lake!
I don’t wanna get bitten by a polka-dotted snake.

(We used to change the last line to “polka-dotted hippo,” because the Official Camp Legend at the camp I attended was that there was a pink-and-purple polka-dotted hippo living in the lake. Her name was Hipper. There was even evidence: we often found her eggs, which bore a remarkable resemblance to watermelons that had been painted with polka dots.)

There was also the song that we generally sang last-before-Taps at the last campfire,

Mm-mm, I’d like to linger
Mm-mm, a little longer
Mm-mm, a little longer here with you

Mm-mm, it’s such a perfect night
Mm-mm, it doesn’t seem quite right
Mm-mm, that it should be my last with you

Mm-mm, but come September
Mm-mm, we will remember
Mm-mm, our happy days and friendships true

Mm-mm, I’d like to linger
Mm-mm, a little longer
Mm-mm, a little longer here with you

And my very favorite:

Once a Girl Scout went to camp (went to camp)
Went to camp without a lamp (without a la-a-a-amp)
There she saw a spider in her bed,
And this is what the Girl Scout said: (Girl Scout said)

Spider, spider go away (go away)
You are not allowed to stay (allowed to sta-a-a-ay)
This is what my leader said:
No two bodies in one bed! (in one bed)

Once a Boy Scout went to camp (went to camp)
Went to camp without a lamp (without a la-a-a-amp)
There he saw a spider in his bed,
And this is what the Boy Scout said: (Boy Scout said)

Wow, I remember so many of these. We had Miss Suzy and Miss Mary Mack and some of the others. We had some variations, though. Miss Suzy’s sister had an 80-meter bra. And some others:

Down down baby
Down by the roller coaster
Sweet sweet baby
I’ll never let you go
Shimmy shimmy cocoa pop
Shimmy shimmy roooock
Shimmy shimmy cocoa pop
Shimmy shimmy roooock
I had a girlfriend (a Triscuit!)
She said a Triscuit (a biscuit!)
Ice cream soda with vanilla on the top!
Ooh Shalita
Walking down the street
Ten times a week
I said it, I meant it
I stole my mama’s credit
I’m cool, I’m hot
Sock me in the stomach,
Three more times, UGH! UGH! UGH![with punching motions]

The cheerleader one I remember, but we also had one like this:

Like awesome, like wow,
Like totally freak me out!
I mean, for sure!
Right on!
Our team is number one!

And a variation on “I’m a nut”:

I’m a little coconut
Sitting on my coco-butt
Everybody steps on me
That is why I’m cracked, you see

Wow, that was a mammoth read but so much fun! I’m kind of heartened that there are so many songs here I never heard when I was a kid – we’re forever being told that TV etc is killing popular culture, that we all only know advertising jingles and so on, so it’s cool to see that that isn’t true. But I never would have guessed that Suzy would be the one song apparently known across the English-speaking world.

I learnt my fave clapping song from my mother (it comes from my grandmother’s youth in South Wales in the 1920s and fits in the ‘rather dubious if you think about it’ category) and taught it to my class in primary school. You do a diagonal clapping thing with it which I thought was the epitomy of coolness when I was 6.

It goes:

My mother said
I never should
Play with the gypsies in the wood
If I did, she would say
Naughty girl to disobey
And my father said that if I did he’d clap my head
With the teapot lid

My mother said
I never should
Play with the gypsies in the wood
The wood was dark
The wood was green
By came Sally with a tamborine
I went to sea no ship to get across
I paid ten shillings for a blind white horse
I upped on his back and was off in a flash
Sally tell my mother I shall never come back!

We always did the last line as loud and fast as possible, so we weren’t clapping so much as hitting each other’s hands really hard. Great days!

Does anybody remember the one that went to the same tune as “I’m a nut” but was about a car? All I can remember is the “rattle rattle rattle crash beep beep” that was part of the chorus.

Also, I’m happy to report that last night some friends and I tried resurrecting some of these handclapping games while we were waiting for something. (It was the end of the last night of the Renaissance Festival where we work, and we were waiting for each person in our car to finish getting their things out of the group’s shed backstage so we could go home!) I remembered the words–because this thread had reminded me–and my friends between them remembered the motions, so we were all set on Miss Mary Mack and Say Say My Playmate. :-)

“You know Princess Pat
Lived in a tree
And she tried to sail
The seventh sea
And she took with her
Her Ricky-dan-doo? (Rikidandoo?)
Which is golden green
And purple too.
A Ricky-dan-doo
What the **** is that? (or what the hell, or what on earth?)
It’s something made
By Princess Pat
And Princess Pat… etc.”

We also had “Down down baby, down by the rollercoaster” which ended in
“My name is K, I, double I, double I, K, I
Please split your LEGS!” on the last line you jump so your legs apart and go round again getting wider and wider until one of you falls over.

Ah! We had SO many of these at Girl Scout camp: the cutest boy, the littlest worm, Princess Pat, the bear in the woods, the song about the Titanic, Down By The Old Mill Stream, She Sat On Hillside and played her guitar … the list goes on!!! This has been such a fun thread to read :)

Get out the diapers
Get out the pins
(name) and (name)
Just had twins!
Twins, triplets, put them in the bath
How many babies did they have?

And then you counted until you stopped skipping. I am not sure why you put twins and triplets in the bath specifically, except that it sort of rhymes with ‘have’. Sort of. Not really. Oh well!

Elsajenie was talking about ‘Barges’, which is a lovely song. I learned it in Girl Guides as well (aka Canadian Girl Scouts). The whole song goes:

Out of my window, looking in the night
I can see the barges flickering light
Starboard shines green and port is glowing red
I can see them flickering far ahead

Barges
I would like to go with you
I would like to sail the ocean blue
Barges
Have you treasures in your hold?
Do you fight with pirates brave and bold?

Out of my window, looking in the night
I can see the barges flickering light
Silently flows the river to the sea
And the barges, too, go silently

[chorus]

[verse entirely of humming]

[chorus of humming]

How my heart longs to sail away with you
I would like to sail the ocean blue
But I must stay beside my window dear
As I watch you sail away from here

[chorus]

At least, that’s how we sang it.

Aestas mentioned a macabre song to the tune of ‘On Top Of Old Smoky’ (or Spaghetti, depending on when and where you learned it). We had a version, too:

The school is all bloody
It’s all over the floor
‘Cause I shot my poor teacher
With an old .44

I went to her funeral
I went to her grave
Some people threw flowers
I threw a grenade

S/he climbed out of the coffin
S/he wasn’t quite dead
So I took a bazooka
And blew off her/his head

Her/his head started rolling
Like a red bowling ball
So I called in a bomb strike
And friends, that is all.

Millefolia said: Does anybody remember the one that went to the same tune as “I’m a nut” but was about a car? All I can remember is the “rattle rattle rattle crash beep beep” that was part of the chorus.

Yep, I know that one! Never used it as a jump-rope or clapping song, just sang it to be annoying.

I’m a little piece of tin
Nobody knows where I’ve been
Got four wheels and a running board
I’m a Ford, oh, I’m a Ford

The special chorus for the alternate varied widely, and sometimes even just ‘honk honk’ etc was used.

I also recalled a game we played in Girl Guides that went with a song, but nobody outside of my troop seems to have heard of it! Let me know if you guys have…

My ship sailed from China
With a cargo of tea
All laden with gifts
For you and for me
They brought me a fan
Just imagine my bliss
As I found myself daily like this, like this, like this, like this
[wave one hand from side to side in time with ‘like this'; keep this up through the rest of the song]

My ship sailed from China
With a cargo of tea
All laden with gifts
For you and for me
They brought me a fan
Just imagine my bliss
As I found myself daily like this, like this, like this, like this
[wave other hand in time with first hand in time with ‘like this'; keep this up through the rest of the song]
[repeat with one foot, then the other so that you are balanced on your butt, then your head…]

My ship sailed from China
With a cargo of tea
All laden with gifts
For you and for me
They brought me a fan
I SAID “NO MORE FANS!”

Alternatively, you repeat ‘like this, like this, like this…’ ad infinitum until people start to fall over; the last person to keep their balance ‘wins’. It can also be sung as a round, with alternating groups singing ‘like this, like this…’ through the next verse.

Miss Mary Mack, Mack, Mack
All dressed in black, black, black
With silver buttons, buttons buttons
All down her back, back, back
She asked her mother, mother, mother
For 15 cents, cents, cents
To see the elephant, elephant, elephant
Jump the fence, fence fence
He jumped so high, high, high
He touched the sky, sky, sky
And he didn’t come back, back, back
Till the 4th of July, -ly, -ly

And this one is pure nonsense, and I’m just writing it phonetically. Guessing it was originally in a foreign language and got reduced to syllables.

Caitlin and Ailbe both have a different version of Johnny broke a bottle from the one we used to have (in NZ, 1980s). Ours went:

Under the bambushes, under the sea (boom boom boom)
True love for you my darling, true love for me
When we get married, we’ll raise a family.
A boy for you, a girl for me
Johnny on the ocean, Johnny on the sea
Johnny broke a bottle and blamed it on me.
I told ma, ma told pa
And Johnny got a hiding with a HA HA HA.

We had “a sailor went to sea sea sea” too, but we didn’t do a clap game to it.

I was recently on a remote island in the pacific ocean (population: 54 – no I am not kidding) and the kids there had some of the same clap games as the kids on a passing (American) yacht! But they weren’t ones I knew.

B.S.A.G.! I heard that same call and response thing with “Beep biddly oten doten ooh walla walla meenie,” but I never learned it and was jealous of the girls who did.

Grew up in the sixties and early seventies.

I knew the shimmy shimmy coco bop to skip rope to, and the teddy bear song. There was also some rope skipping rhyme with a toucan in it, but I’ve never seen it anywhere else.

The little playmate song went with the hand claps. Clap in this order (starting at “play” in “playmate”):

thighs
both your own hands together
your right hand and friend’s right hand
both your own hands together
your left hand and friend’s left hand
both your own hands together
your left hand and friend’s right hand, and your right hand and friend’s left hand
cross your arms in front of your chest and pat your shoulders

repeat

It was “climb down my rain spout” in our version. And we had the sad/mean version with enemies.

Next selection, to the tune of “H A double R I G A N spells Harrigan” from My Fair Lady:

L O double L I P O P spells lollipop, lollipop
It’s the only decent kind of candy, candy
Guy that made it musta been a dandy, dandy
L O double L I P O P you see
Just a lick on a stick guaranteed to make you sick
It’s lollipop for me.

C A S T O R O I L spells castor oil castor oil
It’s the only decent kind of medicine, medicine
Guy that made it musta been an Edison, Edison
C A S T O R O I L you see
Just a lick on a spoon, guaranteed to kill you soon,
It’s Castor oil for me.

I can only remember bits of our ones! We did the Hanky Panky one, and part of the ‘sweet sweet baby, I won’t a-letcha go’ one, but I think it was appended to some other, longer piece. But there are a couple I haven’t seen here, but I can’t remember all of the words:

(before this bit there’s some bit about sex happening ;-P)
Herbert! What have you done to me?
Herbert! We’re gonna have a baby!
Herbert! We’ll call him Sherbert!
And it be Herbert, and Sherbert and me!
What a crazy family!

And then there’s one which I think originated in another language (not unlikely, in the inner suburbs of Melbourne!) and in which I can’t tell if the ‘English’ words really are, or if that’s just how I’ve reconstructed them:

Late to the party, but I loved reading this thread. A couple friends and I were discussing this stuff a year or two ago, and it was cool to read all your versions.

For my part, and this would have been Jacksonville, Fla., from 1985-1989, roughly (I moved to greater Orlando the summer before fifth grade, and have no recollection of handclap games being played at my new school) …

Miss Susie was Susie, she had a steamboat, and a *little* “Ask me.” I think she ended at D-A-R-K dark as well.

Girls went to Mars to get candy bars.

We had “Slide,” and the “moonshine, moonshine, freeze!” version of “Miss Sue from Alabama.” Cinderella (dressed in yella) was the jumprope version. “Apples on Sticks” is the main one I remember, though I certainly couldn’t come up with the hand motions two decades later. As I recall, my version ended with Billy (or someone) with his pants undone as well, and though he could wiggle, wobble and do a split, “I betcha five dollars he can’t do this.” And I think “this” was just a really complicated sequence of claps, sped up until someone missed. Won’t swear to that, though. It’s foggy.

“Concentrate on what I’m saying” was the knife-blood version. I can’t recall what the ending sensation/spooky bit was, if it was the pushed of a building/bridge or what, but that was likely it.

The “sitting on a fence” fellow who “missed like this” is familiar, too, but I don’t think he was a “Chinaman.”

I’m struck my how much less innocent some of your versions of these are than anything I knew in grade school, and I wonder how much of that is a function of socioeconomic factors or rural/urban location …

Some of the other stuff is linked not to the school play yard, but to Girl Scouts and the associated camps: Wadaliacha was one, as was Princess Pat, as was “Barges” and its “Counselors” parody (gotta say, the one I learned was more well put together than the one above!) … and so on. That bobo see ottin tottin thing is familiar, too.

There was another Girl-Scount origin song that I haven’t seen mentioned that is notable to me because a friend and I both know it, with only minor lyrical variations but to two completely different tunes (she grew up mostly in rural west central/southwest Florida and is about five years younger than me):

The Billboard Song

As I was walking down the street
one dark and dreary day
I came upon a billboard
and much to my dismay

the sign was torn and tatterd
from the storm the night before
the wind and rain had done its job
and this is what I saw:

Some like it hot
Some like it cold
Some like it in a pot nine days old.

————

One skipping rope song I haven’t seen here yet is:

Not last night but the night before
Twenty four robbers came knocking at my door
Asked what they wanted, this is what they said
Spanish dancers do the splits (while skipping, follow the actions of the song)
Spanish dancers give a high kick
Spanish dancers turn around
Spanish dancers touch the ground
Spanish dancers get out of this town (run out of the rope)
Spanish dancers come back in (return to skipping)
Spanish dancers sit on a pin

And then at some point someone would yell Pepper and the rope would turn really fast and we’d all count until you messed up.

I have an eight year old daughter and she learned all these from her friends. They do the Miss Suzy one closer to yours, and it’s longer, but I was amazed that that has been passed down girl-to-girl all these years. The hand motions are the same as when I was a kid, 40 miles away from where my daughter is growing up, 35 years later.

My Miss Suzy was Miss Lucy

Miss Lucy had a steamboat
The steamboat had a bell
Miss Lucy went to heaven
And the steamboat went to
Hello Operator
Please give me number nine
And if you disconnect me
I’ll cut off your
Behind the fridgerator
There was a piece of glass
Miss Lucy sat upon it
And broke her little
Ask me no more questions
I’ll tell you no more lies
The boys are in the bathroom
Zipping up their
Flies are in the meadow
The bees are in the park
The boys and girls are kissing
In the D-A-R-K dark-dark-dark.

And that was the end of it. My daughter’s version goes on several more lines, to the 40-acre bra.

There was another one about pulling down your underwear that I can’t remember right now. I’ll have to ask my daughter in the morning. ;)

Oh, I went to the doughnut store for something to eat
‘Cause I was so hungry from my head to my feet
I picked up a doughnut and I wiped off the grease
And I handed the lady a five-cent piece
Well, she looked at the nickel, and she looked at me
And she said, “Hey, mister, you can plainly see
There’s a hole in the nickel, and it goes right through”
And I told her, “There’s a hole in the doughnut too”
Shave and a haircut, shampoo!
Hit by an auto, bam boom!
But I’m not dead yet.
When did it happen? Last night.
How are you feeling? All right.
Clothes on the wash line, all dried up
You sure said a mouthful! Shut up!

On the planet Mars
Where the ladies smoke cigars
Every puff they take
Is enough to kill a snake
When the snake is dead
They put roses in its head
When the roses die
They put diamonds in its eyes
When the diamonds shine
It is 1989!

I was always really bad at these. I know “down by the banks of the hanky-panky” and a few about Miss Suzy, but I could never do them. The only one I knew was:Double double this this
double double that that
double this, double that
double double this that

Now here’s something else I have to feel bad about. My boobs are too big, I’m overweight, and I don’t know any of those cool clapping games all real girls know. I guess I am going to have to drown my misery and insecurity in a deep bottle of Jack Daniels. Quiet sob.

On top of Spaghetti
All covered with cheese
I lost my poor meatball
When somebody sneezed
It rolled off the table
and onto the floor
and then my poor meatball
rolled out the front door
it rolled through the garden
and under a bush
and now my poor meatball
is nothing but mush

As for Aggravation here are the verses I remember:
Aggravation Rehabilitation
aggravation this is how you play:
First you take a bowling ball then you roll it down the hall
Hit your dad make him mad whooooaaaa
Aggravation Rehabilitation
aggravation this is how you play
First you take a rubber hose then you stick it up your nose
turn it on then your gone whoooooaaa
Aggravation Rehabilitation
aggravation this is how you play
first you take a plastic bag then you put it on your head
go to bed then your dead whooaaa

There was one to the tune of the kit-kat jingle (gimme a break, gimme a break), but I never learned the hand motions for it. I also knew Mary Mack, and the Miss Susie/Lucy rhymes.

Did anyone else ever play Concentration 64?
Throughout the whole thing, you go slap, slap, clapclapclap. It can be played with two or more people. The ryme goes:
Concentration (clapclapclap)
Sixty-four (clapclapclap)
No repeats (clapclapclap)
Or hesitation (clapclapclap)
I go first (clapclapclap)
You go second (clapclapclap)
Category (clapclapclap)
(This line you pick a category like names, cars, anything, etc.) (clapclapclap)
Everyone playing has to say a word that fits the category. If you repeat a word, hesitate, or can’t come up with something, then you’re out, and the game starts again.

Then here’s our version of the Miss Susie rhyme. It had motions to go with each verse, but most of them are easy to figure out.

Miss Susie was a baby, a baby, a baby
Miss Susie was a baby, and this is what she said
Waah, waah
Miss Susie was a toddler, a toddler, a toddler
Miss Susie was a toddler, and this is what she said
Wahh, waah, gimme a cookie
Miss Susie was a kid, a kid, a kid
Miss Susie was a kid, and this is what she said
Wahh, waah, gimme a cookie, gimme a piece of bubblegum
Miss Susie was a teenager, a teenager, a teenager
Miss Susie was a teenager, and this is what she said
Waah, waah, gimme a cookie, gimme a piece of bubblegum, ooh ah lost my bra left it in my boyfriend’s car (on “ooh” you cross one arm over your chest, on “ah” you cross the other)
Miss Susie was a mom, a mom, a mom
Miss Susie was a mom, and this is what she said
Waah, waah, gimme a cookie, gimme a piece of bubblegum, ooh ah lost my bra left it in my boyfriend’s car, go to bed, go to bed
Miss Susie was a grandma, a grandma, a grandma
Miss Susie was a grandma, and this is what she said
Waah, waah, gimme a cookie, gimme a piece of bubblegum, ooh ah lost my bra left it in my boyfriend’s car, go to bed, go to bed, oh my aching back
Miss Susie was an angel, an angel, an angel
Miss Susie was an angel, and this is what she said
Waah, waah, gimme a cookie, gimme a piece of bubblegum, ooh ah lost my bra left it in my boyfriend’s car, go to bed, go to bed, oh my aching back, aaahhh(angelic choir imitation, fold hands as if praying)
Miss Susie was a devil, a devil, a devil
Miss Susie was a devil, and this is what she said
Waah, waah, gimme a cookie, gimme a piece of bubblegum, ooh ah lost my bra left it in my boyfriend’s car, go to bed, go to bed, oh my aching back, aaahhh, mwahahahahah (evil laugh, give yourself devil horns)
Miss Susie was dead, dead, dead
Miss Susie was dead, and this is what she said
(do nothing)

Then I knew another version of down by the banks:

Down by the banks of the hanky panky
where the bullfrogs jump from bank to banky
with an ee ee ah ah oh oh um
down by the riverside, kerplunk! (you’re out it they hit you on kerplunk)

And we did another song, but with the same game as down by the banks:

On the planet Mars where the ladies smoke cigars
every puff they make is enough to kill a snake
when the snakes are dead they put roses in their heads
when the roses die they put diamonds in their eyes
when the diamonds break they say: “5, 6, 7, 8, let me see your booty shake!” (you’re out if hit on shake)

and then there was a weird one:
(The first half is really slow, then you try to say the second part as quick as possible)
that’s the way, uh huh, uh huh
i like it, uh huh, uh huh
that’s the way, uh huh, uh huh
i like it, uh huh, uh huh
peace, punch, captain crunch
break the wall in the waterfall
boys think they know it all
they don’t, we do, girlfriend!
(there was a swinging hand grab during the that’s the way part, then you made a peace sign, a fist, saluted, and waved your hands in front of your face)